# Residencia Permanente INM Letter



## GimpLostAndLovinIt (Jan 15, 2013)

Hey guys. 

Living here and loving it. Got my permanent residency visa process started in Phoenix in at the end of March. Based on solvency, was approved same day and crossed into Mexico on 2 April and after some delays, took my documents to the INM office in Tijuana. 

Today, shortly after... i got the approval letter from INM, accessible through their online system... telling me to come in for finger prints and to bring photos....

But I am a little confused.... because... I paid for RP... the sticker in my passport is for RP, and the FMM I turned in was in relation to that as well... BUT the approval letter is constantly referencing Temporal, and stated I showed up with, among other things "an original and copy of the temporary residence visa."

I was assured in the office that everything was for RP and would be fine. Is this a semantics issue in Spanish where I will get the RP at the end anyway? Or did they make a mistake? (It's possible).. 

I'm going to the office on Monday, and I'm sure it will be fine... I just don't want to end up with the wrong card because I already paid the $4528 pesos. I still have my receipts and all documents, so if there is an issue I can discuss it with them... I just don't want to have to start over, or be stuck with something I was trying to avoid... so I am nervous.


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## AlanMexicali (Jun 1, 2011)

Is the letter in Spanish? What exactly did they write? A Residente Temporal visa/card is called in Spanish "Documento migratorio de residencia temporal" might add "tarjeta", " not "Visa de residencia temporal." If you are translating the later to be "Temporary residence visa" I would guess they mean the 6 month "temporary" RP pre-appvoved visa attached to your passport. That is a temporary visa that expires in 6 months, not a permanent visa.


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## GimpLostAndLovinIt (Jan 15, 2013)

Yes the letter from INM is in Spanish. An English letter from INM would be hysterical, though they are dealing with most of the Haitians in English based on how they were going around asking them only if they spoke English. 

Anyway, that's another story... the letter repeatedly states Residente Temporal, and the section where it lists what I showed up with states "Original y copia de la visa de Residente Temporal.."

So, even though that one was RP, I'm assuming, as you state, they mean the temporary version of that. I'm just, as I said, afraid something will get cocked up after I have already paid the 4000+ pesos. 

They do seem to also mention "a tarjeta de Residente Temporal por la temporalidad de un ano" which seems to be the temporary residency card, but someone else with RP told me that their letter said the same thing and they got the right card in the end... so I'm just confused I guess.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Do you speak Spanish well? If not, you may wish to invest in the services of a "facilitator" who will go with you to the appropriate office and help you get this done. Usually, it's cheaper than a "lawyer" and makes life a little easier.


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## GimpLostAndLovinIt (Jan 15, 2013)

I have a friend who is fluent who is going with me on monday to the office. My Spanish is coming along, but leaves a lot to be desired still. The person who initially helped me also was fluent, so yes, it's a huge help. 

There is an office around the corner from the INM building that will assist with filling out the formato basico and making all the other copies and checking everything else before it is submitted for less than 100 pesos.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

lagoloo said:


> Do you speak Spanish well? If not, you may wish to invest in the services of a "facilitator" who will go with you to the appropriate office and help you get this done. Usually, it's cheaper than a "lawyer" and makes life a little easier.


I guess it depends on the level of Spanish. Initially, my Spanish was pretty limited, but I managed to get by without a facilitator. I think there are some advantages in doing things for yourself even when it is sometimes a struggle to understand or be understood. For one thing, my progress in Spanish was greatly aided by having to deal with SAT, IMSS, INM, SRE etc in Spanish. Secondly, I think some people/offices are more tolerant of weak Spanish if they see that you are trying. For example, when I applied for citizenship, I never had to take a test or demonstrate that I spoke Spanish. They could just hear from my interaction with them what my Spanish level was. It wasn't good but it was sufficient that I usually understood what they wanted from me, at least, after the second or third time they said it.


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## horseshoe846 (Feb 8, 2017)

It has been a long time now... Most of the people we dealt with at INM were very nice/friendly people. My Spanish was terrible at the time and in a way my wife acted as my 'facilitator'. One young woman at INM would not let her help me - she told her to wait - and pulled me away to her office. I'm not sure which of us was more frustrated, the INM employee or me - but in the end I did get my RP card. A word of advice : make sure you can easily replicate the signature you have in your passport...

Ya know - in addition to H1B visas - Trump is clamping down on green card issuance. I hope that Mexico is not taking that into account in RP issuance.


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## GimpLostAndLovinIt (Jan 15, 2013)

The first INM woman I got the first day I went to drop off my papers.... had kind of an attitude and got upset when I apologized for my limited Spanish after we had finally reached my limits... she rolled her eyes and told me she didn't speak English and there was no one there who did.... then she asked me if I brought someone with me and where were they, and if I did not, why didn't I.... I had brought someone ironically, but they got stuck looking for parking, and I had been allowed to skip the line, so I was already trying to handle it when they came in, and then I had to explain to them where to go and what exactly I was trying to do....then I was still the one at the information window explaining what I needed to do.... Haha.

Apparently, in the office staff's initial rush to help me because of my crutches, they had sat me in the wrong area and would not let me just go to the information window to get the payment form I needed, and to have my papers checked... so when I sat at the desk after having been practically shoved up there by well meaning people... they were expecting a complete application, and mine was missing the payment form.... which I am sure did not help her attitude. 

However, when I left to handle the situation, get some more documents, make the payment, etc on my own, I came back and an INM agent who was really awesome and patient. She even re-did part of my application at the desk, because the people who initially prepared my documents and checked my documents, down the street from the INM office, which they had sent me to... had entered my passport number in incorrectly. 

She told me in Spanish that technically she could send me home and make me come back another day since it was close to closing time, but she would not hold it against me because I was trying and the rest of my documents were in order perfectly... then she redid the entire online portion of the submission and printed it out from their own printers, and she was happy to help. 

All in all I have had a good experience with INM, so I am sure even if there is some kind of confusion, it will be sorted out, and either way I will get my RP. I do plan on taking someone this time who can actually translate and knows more about what's going on just in case I have to politely argue a point or two... but for the most part I do enjoy trying to handle things on my own. 

A lot of the facilitators in my area for this kind of thing are incredibly over priced, not even including the visa fees for such assistance....especially for something that with a little patience and context, can be handled for free.


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## horseshoe846 (Feb 8, 2017)

GimpLostAndLovinIt said:


> A lot of the facilitators in my area for this kind of thing are incredibly over priced, not even including the visa fees for such assistance....especially for something that with a little patience and context, can be handled for free.


Well hopefully the whole process has been properly ironed out - but when we went through the INM process (my wife and I together) for some reason even though we started Day 1 together we got out of sync - So if there were say 5 visits required at INM to complete the process - we needed nine. And my wife received her card perhaps a month before me. Turns out my card had fallen behind the folders in the file cabinet. It is only due to the luck of an employee overhearing my conversation at the counter and contributing - 'I know I have seen it here' - that prompted a more thorough search.


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## circle110 (Jul 20, 2009)

horseshoe846 said:


> Turns out my card had fallen behind the folders in the file cabinet. It is only due to the luck of an employee overhearing my conversation at the counter and contributing - 'I know I have seen it here' - that prompted a more thorough search.


This almost exact thing happened to me too! They had been telling me the card hadn't arrived for the past 3+ months. Finally, one day one of the facilitators that was there helping someone else overheard me asking how it could be possible to take this long. She asked and I told her what was going on and when she heard my tale, she told the guy behind the counter to go look a little harder. Sure enough, my card and its attendant paperwork had fallen in between two folders in a file cabinet and had been laying there for over 3 months.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

circle110 said:


> This almost exact thing happened to me too! They had been telling me the card hadn't arrived for the past 3+ months. Finally, one day one of the facilitators that was there helping someone else overheard me asking how it could be possible to take this long. She asked and I told her what was going on and when she heard my tale, she told the guy behind the counter to go look a little harder. Sure enough, my card and its attendant paperwork had fallen in between two folders in a file cabinet and had been laying there for over 3 months.


I can add my story to the list. When I applied for Residencial Permanente about 7 or 8 years ago now, I turned in all the paperwork, including proof of income. I watched the online page waiting to be told to come in and finish the process. It never happened. Finally, I decided to go to the office and check on it. They brought out my folder and told me it was waiting on proof of income. So I pulled the copies of bank statements out of the folder they were holding and showed them to them. Then it went through in a few days.


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## GimpLostAndLovinIt (Jan 15, 2013)

Oh goodness you guys, these stories are making me feel so much better! At least so far everyone's has had a happy ending, in spite of the inefficiency. I was surprised how well the online system works these days... just didn't expect it to be processed so quickly given that there were 2 holidays thrown in, and I basically went in on the very last day I could according to their schedule and mine. 

In fact, I almost got in trouble for "waiting so long" but then the guy at the information window laughed and laughed and said "oh well, holidays and things don't count, so there is still plenty of time even if you don't get done today, but try to get done today"


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## perropedorro (Mar 19, 2016)

GimpLostAndLovinIt said:


> The first INM woman I got the first day I went to drop off my papers.... had kind of an attitude and got upset when I apologized for my limited Spanish after we had finally reached my limits... she rolled her eyes and told me she didn't speak English and there was no one there who did....


In Mexico, or in the U.S. for that matter, the attitude of the bureaucrat in front of you makes or breaks the experience. When I was applying for my married-to-a-Mexican temporal, which can be parlayed to naturalization after 2 years, I was blessed to find a very professional INM official in Manzanillo. While my Spanish is pretty good, wife was required to be there anyway. Anyway, I brought up a couple of points that the official wasn't sure of, the guy actually admitted _"No sé_, let's find out." So he made a couple of calls to confirm what I suspected, then apologized and thanked _me_ for the info in case the issue came up again. Compare that to the igno-arrogant attitude of many desk jockeys who, if they don't know something, just make up an answer and send you out the door.


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## circle110 (Jul 20, 2009)

perropedorro said:


> In Mexico, or in the U.S. for that matter, the attitude of the bureaucrat in front of you makes or breaks the experience. When I was applying for my married-to-a-Mexican temporal, which can be parlayed to naturalization after 2 years, I was blessed to find a very professional INM official in Manzanillo. While my Spanish is pretty good, wife was required to be there anyway. Anyway, I brought up a couple of points that the official wasn't sure of, the guy actually admitted _"No sé_, let's find out." So he made a couple of calls to confirm what I suspected, then apologized and thanked _me_ for the info in case the issue came up again. Compare that to the igno-arrogant attitude of many desk jockeys who, if they don't know something, just make up an answer and send you out the door.


I envy you. My previous lost card story was just a small piece of a gigantic fiasco that included errors piled on top of errors by INM. In their defense, I was one of the first that went through the process after the big changes of Nov. 2012 and I was renewing my temporal and also changing it to a temporal por vinculo familiar because I had gotten married to a citizen in the previous year. 

They couldn't figure out how to do that, but rather than ask anyone, they just lied to me and told me they had figured it out. Once I got the visa, I realized that they hadn't done anything and had only changed my marital status to "casado", which is essentially meaningless. 

So, I lost my opportunity to go to RP in 2 years. It's a moot point now since I'll have a Mexican child soon and be able to go directly to RP, but if those clowns had done what your clerk did and asked someone, I'd be RP already and wouldn't have to go through the whole process all over again from scratch.


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## horseshoe846 (Feb 8, 2017)

circle110 said:


> I envy you. My previous lost card story was just a small piece of a gigantic fiasco that included errors piled on top of errors by INM. In their defense, I was one of the first that went through the process after the big changes of Nov. 2012 and I was renewing my temporal and also changing it to a temporal por vinculo familiar because I had gotten married to a citizen in the previous year.
> 
> They couldn't figure out how to do that, but rather than ask anyone, they just lied to me and told me they had figured it out. Once I got the visa, I realized that they hadn't done anything and had only changed my marital status to "casado", which is essentially meaningless.
> 
> So, I lost my opportunity to go to RP in 2 years. It's a moot point now since I'll have a Mexican child soon and be able to go directly to RP, but if those clowns had done what your clerk did and asked someone, I'd be RP already and wouldn't have to go through the whole process all over again from scratch.


I look at it from a slightly different angle than you. We went through all that stuff late 2012/early 2013 and I really think we benefited from no one knowing what to do. I know that we were the very first people to ask for a menaje from our consulate after the changes. The INCREDIBLY helpful consulate employee stayed until 7 or 8PM to get our official menaje printed. (It was my sense that it was actually Aduna Mexico City which actually printed it to the consulate's printer). We were the only three people in the building when we left. We managed to properly import our car into Mexico as permanent residents. The list of impossible feats goes on and on, including some impossible chicken/egg situations. I'm very grateful that we came to Mexico when we did. It would not be as easy today.


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## circle110 (Jul 20, 2009)

horseshoe846 said:


> I look at it from a slightly different angle than you. We went through all that stuff late 2012/early 2013 and I really think we benefited from no one knowing what to do. I know that we were the very first people to ask for a menaje from our consulate after the changes. The INCREDIBLY helpful consulate employee stayed until 7 or 8PM to get our official menaje printed. (It was my sense that it was actually Aduna Mexico City which actually printed it to the consulate's printer). We were the only three people in the building when we left. We managed to properly import our car into Mexico as permanent residents. The list of impossible feats goes on and on, including some impossible chicken/egg situations. I'm very grateful that we came to Mexico when we did. It would not be as easy today.


We were in very different situations, hence the different experiences. By 2012 I had already been living in Mexico for over 3 years and had a RT that I had gotten under the previous rules. Starting anew is no doubt easier than changing something already in put place under a previous law. Also, you dealt initially with the consulate; since I was already in Mexico with legal residency it was pure INM for me. Plus, the guys in San Miguel, where I did all of this, are not friendly nor helpful in the slightest. Ever. And they are glad to fib to you to get you to go away. I have had a number of very pleasant exchanges with Mexican bureaucrats where amazing "impossible" things have been made to happen, but INM in SMA was never among them. 

I'm glad it worked out well for you and I'm really glad that I will be processing my upcoming RP in Mexico City, not San Miguel!


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

perropedorro said:


> In Mexico, or in the U.S. for that matter, the attitude of the bureaucrat in front of you makes or breaks the experience. When I was applying for my married-to-a-Mexican temporal, which can be parlayed to naturalization after 2 years, I was blessed to find a very professional INM official in Manzanillo. While my Spanish is pretty good, wife was required to be there anyway. Anyway, I brought up a couple of points that the official wasn't sure of, the guy actually admitted _"No sé_, let's find out." So he made a couple of calls to confirm what I suspected, then apologized and thanked _me_ for the info in case the issue came up again. Compare that to the igno-arrogant attitude of many desk jockeys who, if they don't know something, just make up an answer and send you out the door.


My story is only related obliquely, because I'm not yet at a point in life that I can make "the big move", so no INM experiences yet. But we do already have a house in Mexico which is in both my husband's and my names. Hubby is Mexican, and when he was going through the process of getting our property registered with _Catastro_ (land registry office), we wanted to make sure there would be no issue around needing my signature (since I wasn't going to be in Mexico when he was doing this). So we went to the Mexican Consulate in Toronto to get a Power of Attorney which would be valid in Mexico.

They apparently have a policy at the Consulate of requiring non-Mexicans/non-native Spanish speakers to use an official translator to ensure they understand what they are signing. Since I'm fluent in Spanish, they allowed me to sign a waiver indicating that I did not require this and completely understood the document. 

I read the standard POA document, written in proper legalese, of course. There were a couple of passages for which I wasn't 100% sure of their meaning. I asked my husband what they meant. He had no idea. I asked the official at the Consulate. He didn't know either. He called out one of the vice-consuls. She also wasn't sure. I finally just went ahead and signed the POA.

We all jokingly agreed it was one of those phrases lawyers put in to make the rest of us feel inadequate.


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## UKMX (Jul 28, 2016)

circle110 said:


> It's a moot point now since I'll have a Mexican child soon and be able to go directly to RP


You'll find Mexico City is far more efficient, and they print the cards while-you-wait, so no issue with it falling down the back of a filing cabinet. I told my story on the forum already, but I went from my daughter's birth to approval of the change of status to RP within 6 weeks, and would have had the card a week later but for the fact I left the country. So let's say it's a 7 week process, including civil registry, infant passport, and INM.

If you need any help with any of it, *circle110*, feel free to send me a private message. My experience is recent as our daughter only came along in October.


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## cscscs007 (Jan 8, 2011)

The easiest way to check if what you paid for is the payment form you took to the bank. If it says 4528 MXN then it is for the Permanent Resident. Each category has a different set of numbers for each payment. Look at your first payment form, the numbers are different (for the 1187 MXN). The forms they send to you in the email are premade, and the INM officer just fills in the blank spots. I think you are fine, and will get you Permanent Residence Card shortly.

PS - If you are going in for your photos and fingerprints the process has been approved for you. They should tell you the date to come back and pick up your card. Ypu don't need a translator for this trip. You go in to the information counter, then sit and wait for your name to be called, look at the document to verify your information is correct, sign I think 2 or 3 times (the last in a book), and you are handed your card. Finished


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## GimpLostAndLovinIt (Jan 15, 2013)

Awesome, yea, I still have the payment form and my copies of the receipt, along with everything else so I just have to go down there. Haven't made it yet though, given the couple of days they have been closed recently and my schedule. I'll get there soon though. I'm sure it will be fine.


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