Where I am right now in my life plan is that I want to go Mexico full-time next winter (although I am prepared to defer that one additional year if need be). So that gives me a year to get everything sorted out, including navigating all the new visa rules. It’s really hard to get advice right now because so many ‘old timers’ are used to the old system and really don’t know anything about the reformed immigration system. Another thing is that Mexico is getting more and more computerized, so a lot of these people just aren’t cognizant of just how strictly you need to follow the rules now compared to the old days.

This is going to be the first in what will likely be a series of posts as I figure out what I need to know to get to myself to Mexico permanently.

Here are a few of the things I need to consider:

Visas

The most pressing thing I need to figure out is how do I get to stay in Mexico for longer than 180 days and begin the path to citizenship? I’ve been getting a lot of conflicting info on that and false hope that I can get citizenship within about five years. Last night, I finally managed to sort it all out.

I read in several places that if I am self-employed with clients outside Mexico and can prove that I make a minimum amount per month, I can apply to be residente permanente (permanent resident), just as a retiree would, and be eligible after four years to apply for citizenship. This is false.

The visa I need to apply for is residente temporal (temporary resident). This isn’t as scary as it sounds. If you get it, you are allowed to stay in Mexico for a full year and then reapply for up to an additional three years. At the end of the three years (four total), you either leave Mexico or convert to a residente permanente visa, and then begin to the path to naturalization.

While the residente temporal path will take me a lot longer to get through, it will actually make it easier for me to get my foot in the door because the income requirements are so much lower and you only need to prove them for the past six months, not a full year. I am now making more than the minimum for both schemes, and, in fact, average at least twice the minimum for the residente temporal requirements. If I can show them a year’s worth of statements, not just the six months they ask for, I’m sure that will give me an edge.

I am also planning to do my interview in Spanish since I can answer the questions easily even without having researched certain terms ahead of time. Some of the questions I need to answer could be why do I want to move to Mexico and how will I support myself?

These visas can only be applied from at your home consulate, which, in my case, is in Calgary. So I need to plan to go there next fall. All this visit gives you is permission to apply for temporary residence when you get to the border. You can still get turned away.

Financial and Tax Matters

I really need to find myself a tax accountant who deals with people in my situation. Google is being surprisingly non-helpful in this regard. If anyone reading this has a tax account who deals with Canadians who move to Mexico, please send me their info!

It’s really unclear at this point what my tax obligation will be when I move to Mexico permanently beyond the fact that I won’t have to pay Mexican taxes. I may be able to be deemed a non-resident for tax purposes in Canada if I cut all my ties here, but I plan to keep my property, so I may not be able to. Needless to say, my next step really is to find an accountant.

I have some debts here that I need to pay off. It’s not realistic to think that I can pay them all off within the next year, but I can make a big enough dent to make a difference. So that’s going to be a priority for me as soon as I get to the lower Mexican cost of living in November.

Vehicle

I need to see if I can keep a legal vehicle here and my SK driver’s license while on residente temporal status or if I should get my Mexican driver’s license and have it be good here.

It is really difficult to bring a non-Mexican plated vehicle into Mexico and nearly impossible right now to have it converted into a Mexican vehicle. I wanted to buy myself a ‘new’ car next spring, but am revising that plan. You can’t have a non-Mexican vehicle on a residente permanente visa anyway, so I think I’m better off not even bothering bringing a vehicle into Mexico and buying one when I get there.

Housing

I’m planning to fly to Mérida this winter to check it out as my possible initial home base for my new life in Mexico, if only to have a comparison point to Mazatlán. I really like the idea of being down in the Yucatán with all the history, Mérida is a colonial city like Maz, it is easier to get to from Montreal, it is one of the lower cost ex-pat destinations (compared to, say, San Miguel de Allende or Lake Chapala), and it has enough of an ex-pat population that immigration services are nearby (no having to drive two hours to get a visa stamped).

Part of the trip will be to look at the rental market and possibly pick out my landing place for the next winter so I have a Mexican address for my visa application. This would involve a much more formal arrangement than what I have in Maz, with a 12-month rental contract and deposit. It will be a gamble to take if I don’t get my temporary resident status approved, but, worst case, I’d still get to use most of the 180 days I’d have as a visitor, so it wouldn’t be a total loss. If I go ahead and sign a contract, I’d probably aim to have it start January 1st of 2017. If I manage to get to Mérida sooner, I could take a short-term rental.

Household Goods

I’m allowed to import so much ‘stuff’ when I move to Mexico permanently, but that amount will be seriously limited if I decide to fly rather than drive in. The truth is that at this point, I can pretty much carry with me everything that I need to start over in life and the rest is just stuff that can easily be purchased anywhere. Yes, some things are more expensive in Mexico, but it’s really not worth the effort to me to pack up a U-Haul with my dishwasher, tools, and washing machine, especially when I would still need them while here. I’m convinced that I can get it all on a plane by paying for excess luggage, a much cheaper option than having anything shipped.

Healthcare

Under a temporary resident visa, I would be eligible for Mexican government healthcare, just like I am eligible in SK. This is basic emergency care and I would also have the option of paying out of pocket for access to private clinics. I will have better access to both regular and emergency care in Mexico than I have ever had in Canada, so I’m not too worried about this part of the moving to Mexico plan.

Name

I’ve been thinking of changing my first name name legally to Rae for several years now and the more I dig into the Mexican bureaucracy and see how much paperwork I’d have to fill out, the more I’m convinced that changing my name before I apply for anything would be really helpful since my legal name on my passport and birth certificate is about a billion miles long and I don’t want to have to keep needing to spell it. Its accent and hyphen also keep causing me grief. This would, of course, delay applying for the visa.

I’m absolutely serious about going to Bulgaria next summer and think that I could start the name change process upon coming back and then apply for my new birth certificate and passport, which I’d need anyway since my current one expires in early spring 2017. This would mean delaying my visa request into the winter, so moving to a short-term rental in Calgary while I sort out everything could be the neatest solution to covering this gap.

A name change request for someone born anywhere in Canada but Quebec is easy. For a Quebecer, it is very difficult and just about impossible if you’re a resident of the province. I’ve spent a lot of time researching this and believe I may have found the path of least resistance in the red tape, so this might not be the impossible plan it seemed a few years ago.

Conclusion

My ‘I want to move to Mexico!’ plan is firming up as I collect more information. It’s no longer something I’m just talking about and researching, but rather actually making concrete steps in implementing. The idea of taking nine or ten years to become a citizen is a bit daunting, but I have to live somewhere, so why not there? It’s not like I’d be a prisoner of Mexico and unable to leave for holidays elsewhere (I’d just need to pay attention to the rules of how much I can be out of Mexico in a certain period of time to not lose my residency status). I’d also have a whole big country to explore and could plan to move to a different city every couple of years!