Mexican Tourist Visas - Travel Visas to Mexico - FMT

Travel & Tourist Visas for Mexico

If you’re reading this, your native language is most likely English and probably from a major English speaking nation such as the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc. so getting a tourist visa to enter Mexico will be so easy that it’s hardly even worth worrying about. In fact, don’t worry about it, just click here to read something more important.

For the record, the tourist visa is called an FMT visa (which stands for Forma Migratoria para Turista). As a tourist planning to stay only a few weeks, all you need to do is show up with a passport. For some countries (such as the U.S.), you don’t even need a passport but a driver’s license and a birth certificate.

Citizens of the following countries can show up with their passport (or I.D. and birth certificate), unannounced: USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, EU, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Iceland, Japan, Singapore, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil.

If you’re arriving by land, that is walking across the border, and then heading on, as a practical matter (that is, completely unofficially) you don’t really need a visa at all. While Mexican authorities are super vigilant about your car papers if you’re driving a foreign vehicle (never get caught without these if you intend to drive), they don’t seem to give a flying rats ass if a gringo has an actual visa of not.

I’ve had probably over 50 contacts with Mexican authorities of one type or another and never have I been asked to show a valid visa. I imagine if I were ever caught without one, I’d shrug my shoulders and say I must have left it my hotel room and that would most likely be that. At any rate, this would only be an issue for people like me on extended stays who still hadn't gotten around to applying for a resident visa (I just got mine, athough unlike the laid back atmosphere surrounding tourists visas, FM3 or higher are not as easy to get and do require a lot of red tape and new vocabulary words such as "apostille".)

If you’re planning on staying for longer than a few weeks, but less than 6 months, you may want to politely request more time for your FMT visa. The maximum is 180 days at which point you supposedly need to exit the country, then reenter to get a new one. I typically enter via Nuevo Lardeo and with regards to Neuvo Lardeo, you don’t actually have to leave the country, but just go to the boarder and get a new one. You can see the US across the river, but you don't actually have to cross. If you plan on staying more time, and especially if you want 180 days, do try to ask nicely because it is totally the discretion of the border officials how much time to give you (which as I’ve mentioned is meaningless if you’re a desperado and willing to wing it).

I normally try to do things the right way (unless it’s totally inconvenient) and so I try to get my rightful 180 days. Once, I came across a guy who refused to give me more than 30 days. Obviously one of those types for whom a little bit of power goes right to their heads. No matter what I said… “I had an apartment rented for 6 moths,” “had a girlfriend who was expecting me,” “was planning to drive and my car permission was for 180 days”… nothing worked. Finally I said ok, fine,… give me ZERO days (pues, bueno no me das nada) and left. I then walked to the bridge and got 180 days from a different, infinitely more understanding official.

That’s one thing I really like about Mexico, in a lot of ways it is the real land of the free. It’s bureaucracy, after decades of low intensity one-party rule, developed a culture that is much more laid back and less meddlesome than others in Latin America and certainly far, far, far less intense than the US. I was once fined $500 USD in Brazil for not having gone to some office to register after I received a student visa (which no one, from the Brazilian embassy to my Brazilian university to my American University ever told me I needed to do and probably didn’t even realize themselves). The rapacious official even stamped across my passport “Não Pagou Multa” which in Portuguese means “Fine Not Paid” when I stupidly tried to do the right thing and register late. With this blaring across my passport, he hoped to trip me up at the airport and force me to pay the ridiculous sum before I left the country. I keep that passport as a trophy because, oh yes indeed, I managed to slip away without paying… but how I did it I’m going to keep to myself. For my totally unreasonable Brazilian friend, whose name is also stamped on my passport, I offer a one finger salute.

So where do you go once in Acapulco if you need to do the visa dance? You go to: Instituto Nacional de Migracion Juan Sebastian Elcano #1 Fracc. Costa Azul Located across the street from the Cici.

It's full of laid back nice folks.

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