How long can I be in Mexico before I have to apply for a residency visa?
Samantha Arnold


Before your tourist visa expires, you have to leave Mexico – but you can easily return right away on a tourist visa. So the short answer to the question of how long you can be in Mexico before having to apply for a residency visa is “indefinitely.” You will find that a lot of people never do apply for residency even though they basically live in Mexico. They just regularly leave every six months to renew their tourist visa. I guess people have different reasons for taking this route - one of which might be that they don´t have the financial resources required to meet the requirements for residency if they aren´t working. Other people are just not interested in going through the bureaucratic process, perhaps because they aren´t planning to stay here forever. However, it is difficult to live in Mexico without residency if you want to do things like open a bank account, work, qualify for medical care, etc.
(Urban lake in the upscale neighborhood of Polanco, Mexico City, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted November 24, 2015
Juan Eufracio Marquez Flores - LM&A Immigration and Legal Services
I have several clients (snow birds, for example), who are here for 4 months and they leave and they say, “No, I don’t want to deal with the Residente Temporal and I don’t want to deal...
I have several clients (snow birds, for example), who are here for 4 months and they leave and they say, “No, I don’t want to deal with the Residente Temporal and I don’t want to deal with the Permanente,” and sometimes they even own property. They go and come back and they have been doing that for more than 10 years. There is no restriction.
(Tourists in Veracruz, Mexico, pictured.)
Posted November 14, 2016
SONIA DIAZ - Sonia Diaz

(Pictured: Colorful street in San Miguel de Allende.)

(Pictured: Colorful street in San Miguel de Allende.)
Posted March 5, 2018