We had ordered books, dog toys, DVDs, clothing, and other miscellany for Peter to bring down for us. He got a small suitcase and checked all that through, taking Kelly’s new camera with him in the cabin.

Mexico has a red light — green light system at Customs, at airports and when you drive in. Peter got a red light.

The official asked him to open our suitcase, which Peter had also stuffed with some of his clothing. The man pulled the clothes back to reveal a row of books.

“Estudiante?” he asked Peter. (Student?)

“No, me gusta leer,” replied Peter. (No, I just like to read.)

That was all. I wondered if the dog toys had been revealed, just what Peter would have said.

Getting things down here does seem to be easier when people bring things in with them than if they come by mail (with unreliability) or even something like Fedex (reliable). It’s one of the challenges of living here. Usually it works out fine if you are patient enough and know enough people coming and going! That suitcase of ours is going back to Colorado today with a friend and likely coming back in January when some other friends are coming for a visit. I’m already making the shopping list for January. All-cotton turtlenecks and some other warm all-cotton clothing, toothpaste, some books…

Peter Gets Through Customs at the Guadalajara Airport is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Here in the Lake Chapala area, foreigners often do their renewals on Wednesday mornings in the small city of Chapala. An American friend here on a tourist visa told of waiting and waiting to apply for a renewal while other foreigners waltzed in with the scraps of paper with numbers they had saved from the previous week, and effectively cut in line ahead of her. I wasn’t eager to go there myself, though at least it would be a much shorter trip than last year.

There are Mexican attorneys lakeside who handle such matters, and we ended up working with Azucena Bateman Campos, who was a delight to work with. (She’s in the law office on the west side of Colon in Ajijic, just up a bit from the central plaza, Legal & Immigration Services at Colón # 41-A, and everyone in the office is great!) She knew just what papers were needed to show our financial worthiness, and it wasn’t what I would have thought. Because she does so much of this kind of work, she goes to Guadalajara several times a week, as the immigration office there is open Monday through Friday.

As it turned out, she was well worth her reasonable fees. The unexpected snag we ran into was that last year, in order to qualify for showing less income, I had been listed as a dependent of Kelly’s. The Queretaro office of the Migra, as it’s called, had required that they receive a copy of our marriage certificate, apostilled and translated into Spanish, by July of last year. We had had the documents sent to a woman translator in Queretaro we became friendly with, and she had evidently submitted them, as when we saw her this year, she gave us copies. But neither she nor we noticed that she didn’t give us hard and fast proof from the Queretaro office that these papers had been turned in and on time.

So the Guadalajara office socked me with a daily fine for not having turned in the papers until the day that our attorney here, Azucena, did again. It came to about $90 US. Azucena said that generally her office doesn’t recommend going the dependent route because of possible hassles like this. Live and learn.

We picked up our renewed FM 3 visas from her just a day before we had to fly to the US because Kelly’s mother had died. I’m sure there would have been a creative Mexican way that we could have gone out of the country and back in again without them, but it was nice not to have to learn it!

Renewing our FM 3 Visas is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Mexican Politics is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

We got to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion in Queretaro just after nine this morning, having come in from our town of Bernal, about an hour’s bus ride away, with a 15-minute taxi ride from the bus station. We waited about an hour before it was our turn, and then we gave the woman helping us the temporary papers we had. She went upstairs.

We waited, standing at the counter. After a while I said to Kelly, “Maybe they are doing them right now.” Kelly burst out laughing and agreed. Or maybe they were looking for them… with all the folders that are everywhere, they must misplace some now and then.

Finally the woman came downstairs with our folders. When she brought our FM-3s to the counter, I did a little dance. Then we had to sign a bunch of papers and put our thumbprints on the FM-3s and on some documents. I asked if Kelly could take a picture, and that was fine:

On the counter in front of me is a box of candy, a goatmilk candy that Bernal is famous for. I had put a note on the box in my bad Spanish which will give them a laugh or two no doubt. Basically I said “Thanks to everyone in the Instituto Nacional de Migracion for your patience and help. Would to God that one day the US government will be as welcoming to Mexicans as you have been to us.”

If you’ve been reading my blogs about the FM-3 process we have gone through, you know that it’s taken patience on our part as well. But repeatedly we have received great kindness from the people at the counter in explaining things to us over and over and in helping us figure out what to do.

So we had our Mexican FM-3 visas, giving us residency in Mexico and the freedom to come and go at the border. What a thrill! We took a taxi across town and I told the cab driver that we had just gotten our visas to live there. He congratulated us and welcomed us warmly to Mexico. Mexicans are generally quite pleased that we like living here.

Our next stop was the fancy mall I showed photos of recently. We went to the Lloyd’s office and opened an account there. Then we had lunch and took another taxi back to the bus station. It was cool and overcast today, looking like rain. We had a short wait for the bus to Bernal. I’ve mentioned before that the bus stations resemble airports in the U.S… here’s a picture in the local bus section. The waiting areas for long-distance buses are cushier. When the clerks at the counters aren’t busy helping customers they call out the names of cities that they serve.

So now we are wrapping up details at home and packing up. We left some money for the electricity and water bills, and for cat food, with our landlord and friend Francisco. He thought we’d left more than we needed to, and then told us a Mexican saying that I may have written down correctly: “Mas vale que sobre y no que falte.” So it’s better that we leave too much than too little.

That reminded me of another saying he had told me once before, and I asked him to say it again. “Quien es mas rico? El que mas tiene o el que menos ncesita?” which translates as “Who is richer? He who has more or he who needs less?” Kelly and I like this one a lot, as we have done so many things in our lives because we generally need less.

11 Comments from the old blog:

• At May 27, 2005 10:10 PM, BillieS said…

  Congratulations on your FM3 visas and resident status. You feel so at home when you don’t have to stop at the border.
  So like you BELONG.
  Billie

• At May 28, 2005 5:19 AM, Anonymous said…

  I have followed you blogs since day one on your Mexican adventure.
  After years of travel and living in Mexico, I see that you have found that there is a better way of life. To live simple with people who know how to make you fell a part of them, is one of the greatest feelings one can have. Hope to see you return to your second/new home very soon. Now travel and see the rest of this wonderful country.

• At May 28, 2005 11:06 AM, Rosana Hart said…

  Thanks, both of you! It’s an odd combination, to receive these visas that allow us to stay here AND that’s what is prompting our packing up and housecleaning to leave!

  Anonymous, it’s comments like yours that keep me blogging. I’ve “met” some of my readers via email but I know there are lots more out there. Thanks for your welcome.

• At September 08, 2005 4:02 PM, Anonymous said…

  After hearing about the delays and hassles in dealing with the bueacracy in order to get an FM3, we spent paid $140 US (for both of us) to a paperwork/document
  “broker” and simply sat back and waited. One trip to get photos taken and one for fingerprinting. Wilma told us what proof of income and residency information we needed and handled all of the photocopying and running back and forth to immigration and to the bank. In three weeks we had our FM-3. We will need to renew this coming February and will hire Wilma to do it for us again. We figure everything else is so cheap in Mexico, why go through the hassle to save a few Peso’s.

• At September 08, 2005 5:58 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  This broker sounds like the way to go! I didn’t know about such people when we got started.

• At May 24, 2006 7:24 PM, lou said…

  Congratulations on your residency papers for Mexico lindo! I read the whole blog & have 3 pages of notes :) but I may not have your patience so will look for a docu/paperwork broker when in Veracruz. Would this be “corredor de documentos” in Spanish? I’ll find it, no problemo.
  I read that it could be easier to get the FM-3 while still in your home country and was thinking of looking into it before leaving to live in Veracruz. But I’m not absolutely ready to get residency & wasn’t sure what to do. I may use my 6-month tourist permission to decide. Cheers and mucha suerte!

• At May 24, 2006 8:48 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  Lou, I think it is often easier to get started with the FM-3 in the US and perhaps in other countries, but I think (not sure) that in that case, you still have to go to la Migra once you get settled.

  If you aren’t sure, I’d say stick with your plan of going in on a tourist visa.

  It’s been about a year now since we got our FM-3s. We have moved to the Lake Chapala area, and for renewals we hired an excellent young woman lawyer whose English is great and she is charging us 600 pesos each to do all the running around. There has been some too, as the Migra in Guadalajara is fining me for not getting that wedding license in until now, because the translator never gave me actual paper proof she had taken it to the Queretaro office, and the lawyer hasn’t been able to reach her. That’s about 900 pesos, which I mind less than I would have minded the trips into the big city for this purpose. (There is an office in Chapala but it is only open one day a week and our attorney does so much of this work that she goes into Guadalajara several times a week.)

• At May 25, 2006 12:58 AM, bajamalibu said…

  Thank you for taking the time to log your FM3 adventure! My husband and I are about to begin the process of obtaining our FM3. If anyone has a recommendation for a broker in the Los Angeles or Rosarito area, we would greatly appreciate the referral. My email address is wjohn38912@sbcglobal.net

• At May 25, 2006 8:18 AM, Rosana Hart said…

  Bajamalibu, try doing searches on google and yahoo for fm3 and “los angeles” or fm3 and rosarito, also using the word broker or lawyer or some such word if needed. Local search is getting much better online!

• At September 24, 2006 9:53 PM, bluspagetti said…

  I’ve been living and working here for over six years, married a Mexican here and have had two children here. I’m glad to see there are people who still have a tolerance for the bureaucracy. I can’t wait to get my wife’s K-3 so we can get out of here and back to the US where we belong.

• At September 25, 2006 10:55 AM, Rosana Hart said…

  Bluspaghetti, good luck wherever you end up. There are certainly times when the Mexican bureaucracy drives me nuts but that happened in the US too.

Mexican FM-3 Visas, 7 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Another bus came and stopped. It had people standing in the aisles, and the thought of standing for an hour didn’t sing to us, so we let it go by. We had been told that we could always take a local bus from Bernal to the crucero (crossroads) a few kilometers away, so we said to each other that if necessary we would do that. From there, you could catch a Queretaro-bound bus much more often.

Within five minutes or less, three more Queretaro-bound buses came along the highway. All were full and none stopped. This was definitely something different. I wondered if today was some sort of holiday, but then it dawned on me that it was Monday morning. I asked a young man who was also waiting for a Queretaro bus if that was why there were so many people and buses. He said yes.

Just then another bus came along. He got on it, and so did Kelly and I and a couple of other men. It was full of sleeping Mexicans but no empty seats. So we stood after all. Usually people going a short ways get off, so I figured we would get seats. A woman got off who had been sitting right behind the driver, and one of the standing young men motioned me into her seat. The young man sitting next to me rearranged his large tote bag to be out of my way. I asked him if he was going to work in Queretaro, and he said yes and he wouldn’t go home till Friday.

Nobody else got off the bus, but quite a few more people got on, so Kelly did end up standing all the way. I had noticed that there is an art to holding on in a bus going around curves at the speed limit, and Kelly had plenty of time to refine his technique.

I liked my location right behind the driver. There was a divider and a curtain so I couldn’t see the traffic straight ahead, but I had an open view of the fields and houses on our right, through the windshield on the passengers’ side. The most unusual sight was a dead horse beside the road. As the bus filled up, my view changed to the stitching on people’s jeans at hip level. One fellow was wearing a t-shirt with a motto I liked: “No pierdas el animo.” Animo means pep or spunk according to Kelly’s electronic dictionary, and the motto exhorted us not to lose it.

I noticed that above the door were several personal items of the driver’s: a baby shoe, a nicely detailed drawing of two sunflowers, a Virgin of Guadalupe, and a couple of snapshots. He was a good driver, as all the bus drivers and most of the taxi drivers have been. I blogged a few months ago that I was taking a tranqulizer before traveling on Mexican highways, but that need has disappeared, gracias a Dios.

Every now and then, we’d hear a couple of sharp beeps. The first time it happened, I thought someone was getting off and Kelly would get a seat, but then I noticed that a light flashed up front in connection with the beeps and it meant the driver was going over the bus speed limit of 95 kilometers an hour, which is 59 miles an hour. Our driver was making good time and there were plenty of beeps till traffic got thicker and slower. Once we were on the freeway for the last 15 minutes into the city, there were beeps galore.

As we rode along, I reflected on how we were part of a huge influx of people heading for Queretaro, no doubt from every direction, along every highway large and small that led into this city of about a million people. There is work in Queretaro, at factories and in construction. Most though certainly not all of our fellow passengers were young men. No doubt this same influx was happening at the same time in many cities around Mexico. Work is in the cities.

It was a very Mexican experience, being part of this vast movement of humanity via numerous large buses, and I enjoyed it. Then I wondered wryly how long the thrill of exploring another culture would outweigh some of the inconveniences, like not being able to phone to find out if our visas were ready.

We quickly caught a cab at the bus station — it’s well organized, you buy a ticket at a kiosk and the taxis are in line. City traffic was no heavier than usual, to the historic central district which is all we really know of Queretaro. But it was a little later than usual when we got to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion, so we had to wait a little over an hour until it was our turn at the counter. We’ve been there so often now we know which of the characters on the morning TV show they have running softly in the waiting room are the regulars.

Our visas? Come back Friday. They should be ready.

Well, they had told us that today was mas o menos — more or less.

So we had a nice brunch in a former convent hundreds of years old, took a taxi, took the bus — practically empty going out of the city — and got home around 2:00PM. As we walked back across Bernal, we saw another foreigner who has lived here for some time. I told her what we had just been doing and she said that she always just phones to make sure her FM-3 is ready. We said we had been told we couldn’t phone. She said she always does and promised to find us the phone number. I don’t know if it will do us any good this week, as our business at home needs us back and if we waited on Friday to phone when they open and then went into to town, it could run us too late in the day for some other errands that depend on the FM-3. We’ll see.

Mexican FM-3 Visas, 6 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Well…

Yesterday we went back into Queretaro, to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion. It’s an hour bus ride from our village of Bernal, but from the time we leave our house and walk to the highway, wait for the bus, and take a taxi across the city of Queretaro, it’s more like two hours each way. The Migracion office does not accept phone calls asking about the status of your application.

Yesterday’s ride into town went smoothly and we got to the Migracion office around 9:00 AM, rather sleepy as the Cinco de Mayo dance downtown had gone on to the wee hours. The music stopped sometime around midnight and was then followed by the jolly sounds of a lot of people walking home up our hill. If we hadn’t had the Queretaro trip planned, we might have gone dancing ourselves.

To our surprise, the office was packed. We took a number, which was 11 numbers away from the one being served, and had a wait of almost an hour and a half. People kept pouring in (mostly Mexicans) and by the time we left, newcomers were about 25 numbers away from the current one. There were two people at the front desk, where we’ve only seen one before. It reminded me of when I was a librarian, that the day after a holiday was usually enough to almost make us wish we hadn’t had a day off!

When our turn came, we spoke with a woman whom we hadn’t met before. We were hopeful that we would get our FM3s on the spot. No such luck. Instead, we each got a letter telling us what steps we still need to take.

Kelly needs to pay the annual FM3 fee of about $100US at a bank, after buying a form at a stationery store in triplicate. We knew this routine, as we had done it already for a smaller fee to get our applications going. He also needs the financial reports I had downloaded from the internet translated into Spanish. I asked where we could get translations done and was told where in the government offices of Queretaro we could get a list of authorized translators.

The name on my letter was Rosana Lesley [my middle name] Linebarger [my father's last name] Snow [my mother's last name]. Hart, the last name I’ve used for 30+ years, was nowhere to be seen. Oh well, we know a Swiss man who came out Korean after getting his FM3.

I need both the things Kelly did myself, plus two more. One looks like a pretty simple matter, a form where two Mexicans sign that they know me. The other one is an offical copy of our wedding certificate, not the copy of our certificate at home that I had provided, and it had to be translated into Spanish and apostilled. I asked how to do that. The woman said go to Mexico City to the American Embassy. I said I couldn’t do that. Then she said I could go to the American consulate in San Miguel Allende, not far away. She even had a little slip of paper with the phone number for the consulate. We have 14 days to get these papers together, after which they have at least 8 days to do whatever they will do next.

Quite discouraged, we stopped at the same stationery store we had used before, to get the forms we needed to pay the bank. They were out, but sent us a few blocks away to another place that had them. We went to the Queretaro justice department, where a peaceful sit-in is going on. We walked past it without noticing what it was for, a sign of how dazed we were. We got the list of authorized translators easily, and I asked if any of them were near the downtown area. One was, and we phoned her from a pay phone. Her English was excellent, and we got directions to her house. But she couldn’t do the translation that day. So we gave up on getting everything back in to the office that day.

Then we called the US Consulate in San Miguel. Luckily, we got through on the third try. Someone there was able to tell me that they do not apostille wedding certificates and that since we got married in California, the Secretary of State in California would have to do it. Okay, no way would we be able to do it that day! In fact, we may not be able to get it before we leave.

We went and had some lunch. Kelly was cheered by finding some organic coffee beans with a grinder in a downtown coffee shop. (No, not Starbucks, but it doesn’t sound very Mexican: The Italian Coffee Company.)

On our first trip to Queretaro, there had been a restaurant owner who was very helpful about our FM3s and spoke very good English. He had said at that time that if there was anything more he could do for us, to be sure and ask. Now Kelly had an intuition to ask his advice. So we did, and he asked if we knew anyone in Sacramento who could help. Well, not there, but we do have family and friends around northern California. Our advisor suggested asking for help at that end and then using DHL rather than Fedex or UPS to get the documents sent here. We’d heard before that they were good.

Cheered by his kindness, we walked to the home office of the translator. We got a bit confused by her directions but people in the neighborhood pointed us in the right direction. She turned out to be very knowledgeable and helpful. She showed us an Apostille from the California Secretary of State which she had for someone else. While you can live your whole life in the US without ever hearing the word apostille, it’s much used internationally: it is a way that documents from one country are stated to be valid for other countries. She also looked over our downloaded bank statements and pointed out several reasons why they would likely not be acceptable even if translated. We agreed to see what a friend at home could find and then email her the jpg files.

Well, that was all we could do. We had walked two or three miles around the downtown area in getting that much done. We grabbed some cold drinks and then got a taxi back to the bus station. The taxi driver had more of an air of a professional man than most of them do, and his clothing suggested that too. I asked how long he had been driving a taxi and he said a year and a half. He confirmed that he had a professional background though he didn’t say what, and he said the Mexican equivalent of “You do what you gotta do.” It certainly put our own troubles in perspective.

We thought we were leaving Bernal day after tomorrow, to return to the US. We aren’t. I guess that’s a silver lining, but at present I’m in overwhelm. I am pretty happy with the way Kelly and I are dealing with this. Usually if one of us is discouraged, the other one can help.

I do believe that things happen for a reason. The reason here may turn out to be simply that dealing with bureaucracy calls for being more patient than is my style. We’ll see. It’s possible that Kelly might get his FM3 and mine would have to wait till we come back.

I’d better mention that every Migracion office has its own way of doing things. We were not asked for apostilled birth certificates, for example, which some offices have required. Other people have breezed through this process.

8 Comments from the old blog:

• At May 08, 2005 8:57 AM, BillieS said…

  Rosana, I hate to tell you this story but we got our FM3’s at the Mexican consulate in Houston. Took 3 bank statements, passport, check, photos, filled out their form. Left it all and came back the next day to pick up the new FM3. Then when we arrived in San Miguel, we went and registered at immigration here. We had to have proof of housing which I think was an electric bill. When I registered I also needed a letter from my husband stating that I lived with him and our marriage license which isn’t an official one but one of the pretty ones that you get when you marry.

  Paula is the secretary at the Mexican Consulate here in SMA and she knows everything so if you need help she is a good one to talk to. Her English is very good too.

  I’m sorry you are having a problem with this. My husband speaks pretty good Spanish but when you get into something like this you realize how much you miss in the translation and also you realize how little we understand of the culture in this beautiful, friendly country.

• At May 08, 2005 10:36 AM, BillieS said…

  oops, I meant to write that Paula is the secretary at the American consulate in SMA.

• At May 14, 2005 9:47 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  I got a private email too from a friend who had easily gotten an FM-3 in another city. Oh well, I guess lessons in patience were what we needed just then! AND we do know our way around Queretaro a lot better.

• At May 16, 2005 10:18 AM, Abundio and Ruth said…

  Interesting! We’re dealing with the Consulate in Chicago – I will say that they are probably very efficient at what they do. But it is like pulling teeth getting information from them!! We did the menaje de casa and had a few errors, which they apparently weren’t going to tell us what they were until one of the men finally told us. They also told us I can’t apply for my FM3 until I’m in the country (we’ll be in San Luis Potosi). I do have one question – when I’m gathering up my information, do I have to provide my divorce papers too? My birth certificate has a different name than my marriage license. Thank you so much for putting this process up and explaining apostille!!!

• At May 16, 2005 3:35 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  Will you need your divorce papers? Good question, Ruthie, and you’re not going to like my answer…

  It depends. On unknown factors.

  To be on the totally safe side, you would have an apostilled birth certificate, an apostilled divorce certificate, and an apostilled wedding certificate for your current marriage.

  But if you had all those documents (after considerable time and expense), they might not want one of them!

  It depends.

  But I’m not surprised at your being told you will need to apply for your FM3 in Mexico. I read on the excellent membership forum mexconnect.com, that various people had been told the process was becoming more one to be done in Mexico itself.

  Best wishes, and here’s hoping you have such an easy time of it that there is no story to it at all!

• At May 16, 2005 3:37 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  Oh, and I meant to say too, I certainly wouldn’t trot out the divorce certificate unless they asked for it. But I would have it along.

Mexican FM-3 Visas, 5 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

A week ago today, as I blogged, we went to the nearby city of Queretaro to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion. We thought our FM-3 visas might be ready, but instead we each got a letter saying what they still needed from us. We each needed to pay the annual fee for the visa, of about $100 US. We were expecting that. They also wanted our bank statements translated into Spanish, and we found a translator that day.

That was all Kelly needed but because I was being listed as his dependent, they wanted an official copy of our wedding certificate and it had to be apostilled and translated into Spanish. Apostille may not be a household word in your family, but it has become one in ours lately! Basically there is an international agreement that different countries will accept apostilled documents from other countries as valid. There was one more thing they needed for me, a relatively simple form where we said that we were living as a married couple and two Mexicans had to sign it and we had to have photocopies of their national voters’ cards for ID.

So after that meeting with the bureaucracy a week ago, we were not sanguine about my getting an FM-3. It turned out that there was no way we could get an apostilled wedding license in the 14 days allowed, as it involves two different offices in California and then expressing it down here via DHL (said to be the most reliable courier service), not to mention that we were planning to leave for the US a few days ago anyway.

Our translator had some out-of-town work so it wasn’t till today that she was going to have our translations done. Early in the week, I wondered about going in to Queretaro myself to ask some questions about other choices, but the day I thought of going, I didn’t sleep well the night before, so I just waited till today.

Also during the week I’ve received emails about two other American women whose marriage licenses just like the one I have HAD been accepted by Mexican officials — but in other places. Each Migracion office has the power to require what they want. I know of other Americans who have had to have apostilled birth certificates even though they had passports. This was not in Queretaro.

Yesterday we went over our papers and had one of our rare squabbles, due mostly to the stress of this surreal situation. It didn’t last long, and we did do the form saying we live together where two Mexicans had to sign and provide ID. A friend who runs a grocery store down the street and his assistant know us both and were happy to help out. We didn’t know if we would need it, but at least we would be showing good faith efforts to do all we could.

A neighbor of ours up the street a little ways makes his living with his pickup truck which has stock panels in it. We’ve most often seen a big water bin or hay bales in it, but yesterday in the late afternoon, he pulled in with two sheep in it. They proceeded to B-A-A-A for hours, and I wondered how we would sleep. Well, the sheep slept fine after dark so we did okay too.

This morning we left Bernal on an early bus and got to Migracion in Queretaro before 9:00AM. Our wait was short, and there we were with the woman who had gotten a little stern with me last week when I said we didn’t have apostilled documents in the U.S. (She was right, I just hadn’t heard of them.)

This morning, I explained our dilemma. There wasn’t time to get an apostilled copy of the wedding certificate. I began to ask something but she cut me off. All smiles, she said that there was no problem.

She said I could submit a letter saying the apostilled wedding certificate, translated into Spanish, would be coming within a month.

I said but we can’t stay a month more in Mexico. We have to get back to our business in Colorado ASAP, so will I need to get my tourist visa back?

She said you can go with your FM-3.

I said that there wasn’t time to get it. Kelly had by now caught on to what she was saying but it took me a few moments longer to catch on.

She was saying that I could get my FM-3 without the apostilled wedding certificate. My jaw dropped as she explained that if I wrote the letter, then they would go ahead and give me the FM-3. I could have a friend here in Mexico bring in the papers when they arrived.

The human face of Mexican bureaucracy!

So we left quite happily, to go pay our fees at a bank, have a meal, and pick up our translated documents. Our translator kindly whipped out the letter I needed — in impeccable Spanish.

This Migracion office has a take-a-number system for people waiting their turns, and if you come back on the same day, you don’t have to take a new number but can basically cut in line. So practically the minute we walked in the door around 1:00 PM, we did that. A friendly man we hadn’t seen before began going through our papers with us. I was pleased when our benefactress of the morning came in with a huge pile of folders and immediately called out to him that I only needed a letter today. Was this a standard Mexican way of getting around the bureaucracy, or something she had invented on the spot? We don’t know.

Soon, the man was smiling at us and saying that they had everything they needed. I am not sure what came over me, but he was quite jolly so I asked if he was sure that they didn’t need the name of our cat. He assured me that would not be necessary.

Our visas should be ready in ten days, more or less. Ten days is a week from Monday, so I asked if more or less might mean the visas would be ready next Friday. No, they doubted it.

So here we are in Bernal for at least another ten days. What a fate. Can we stand it? Stay tuned.

2 Comments from my old blog:

• At May 14, 2005 6:34 AM, Bidstrup said…

  Most gringoes have a problem with it at first, but mordida is a fact of life when dealing with the establishment in Mexico. Migration in Queretaro was sending you all the signals, but perhaps they were too subtle. The problem probably could have been solved for no more than 500 pesos.

• At May 14, 2005 9:42 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  I wasn’t born yesterday (hardly!) but it had actually never crossed my mind that there was a chance for mordida there. After I read this comment, I asked the opinion of some Americans who live in Queretaro and have dealt with Migracion a lot.

  They said that this might well be true in many other places in Mexico, but that times are changing all over the country, and that it would not have worked in Qro, it likely would have made them annoyed at Kelly and me.

  This is all part of what makes this such a Kafkaesque experience. What ARE the rules? And do last year’s or last week’s rules still apply?

Mexican FM-3 Visas: 4 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Wednesday we spent the day doing it as best we could. Because we didn’t yet have a copy of the every-two-months electricity bill showing that it had been changed to Kelly’s name (not mine as well because only one person is allowed on the bill), we were going to have to get our landlord to write a typewritten letter explaining the situation. When I went next door in the morning to tell him this, he said that the bills had just arrived in town. We walked a few blocks to a shop where practically nothing was for sale but there was a huge stack of bills on the counter. We found ours and tra-la! It had Kelly’s name on it, so happily Francisco didn’t have to write a letter. (We paid about $4 US for two months.) We needed a utility bill as proof of address.

Then there were the application forms to be filled out correctly by typewriter. Luckily, our American friend Rob has a self-correcting portable typewriter and better Spanish than us. The three of us figured out my forms around the kitchen table, then Kelly went over to Rob’s to do the typing. It was a relief to me to have some time alone, as all this paperwork wasn’t the most fun. But I wasn’t free of it… I sorted out our papers into piles, went around the corner twice to get papers copied, printed out application letters we needed in Spanish.

Meantime, Kelly and Rob had run into trouble on Kelly’s application form. There were some 11 physical characteristics that had to be marked. Rob had a teenage boy doing some gardening in his patio, and the boy solved those mysteries. He just looked at Kelly and the form and knew exactly what to put.

We had a respite when we went to visit another American couple who are living here part-time now. With us and Rob, that brings the entire American population of Bernal to five in residence, with four others I know of who are in the US at present. The funny thing is how rarely I even think about nationality anymore! People are people, and we have so many friends here.

In the evening, we signed the papers, double-checked things, and discovered we needed a copy of our landlord’s ID (federal voting registration) along with our rent contract. He wasn’t home till quite late, but not to worry, the copy place around the corner is part of the same family business as a hangout for local youth and I’d already found out they were open till 10 or 11.

When Francisco got home, he turned out to have a copy of his ID so we were ready for the morning. He kindly offered us a trip to within five minutes of Queretaro, leaving at 6:30AM the next day, but since it was going to be in a cattle truck taking bulls to a slaughterhouse, we decided the bus would be more relaxing.

We woke early enough to get out to the highway for the 8AM bus to Queretaro. As we waited, we chatted with a lively young woman who was waiting for a different bus. It turned out she was a chemical engineer who had come to Bernal overnight to go up on the rock. She’s working now in a situation at a factory that doesn’t really use all her skills, but work is work.

Once in Queretaro about 9:00AM, we took a taxi to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion, where the same helpful woman as on Tuesday went over our papers to be sure we had them all. We didn’t quite, but no problema. We should have had a second copy of Francisco’s ID for my file, and I needed another application letter. She waved away the copy, saying it would be okay, and asked me to write out my letter by hand. She hadn’t asked us before for a copy of our marriage certificate, but now she did. I had expected they might want that, and a friend at home had found ours in my files and scanned it in for me.

She didn’t actually read the papers at this stage. Someone else will do that. She had taken away our FM-T tourist visas and given us a temporary paper. We are to go back in one week. If all goes well, our FM-3 visas will be ready!

I told her that after she been so helpful to us earlier in the week, I had hoped that the day would come when Mexican citizens applying for visas to the United States would receive as hospitable a welcome. She smiled.

We noticed as we left that there were quite a few people waiting. Coming early is a good strategy.

As Kelly and I walked to downtown Queretaro, we commented to each other that we hadn’t even thought when we left the United States in December that we would apply for Mexican residence visas. Now, with our tourist visas out of our hands, we weren’t tourists anymore!

We had brunch downtown. I stopped in at Woolworth’s Mexicana, and was greatly tempted to buy a pair of panties that said on them in English, “Love in Jail.” But I don’t like polyester underwear, so I passed them by. The Mexican use of English is a constant source of amusement to us, not unlike the entertainment we provide our Mexican friends with our Spanish.

As the comfortable bus rolled through the dry Mexican central highlands back to Bernal, I listened to the Andean music CD and felt grateful. And curious. What’s coming?

Mexican FM-3 Visas: 3 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

So this morning we were curious what it would be like to actually encounter Mexican goverment officials in this quest. From other foreigners, we’d heard that the office in Queretaro was a helpful one. But I’d read many different tales online and in books, about the quirks of Mexican bureaucracy. As we walked over to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion from our hotel, I was mostly curious and hopeful, a little daunted at the challenge I knew this would be to our Spanish, and a wee bit nervous.

The office had a take-a-number system, and we had about a 15-minute wait. A blond woman came in after us and sat down without taking a number. I went over to her, to tell her that she needed one. She looked like an American to me so I said in English, “Do you speak English?” She said yes.

It turned out that she had a number but had stepped out for something, but we started chatting. She is Mexican, with an American mother, and married to a European. This is not all that unusual here — I think few Americans realize how cosmopolitan Mexico is! We had a lively chat in English, and I was almost sorry when it was our turn at the counter.

The immigration official we spoke with could not have been more helpful. I did have to ask her to slow her Spanish down several times. She spoke a little English, but I didn’t realize that till near the end.

She had a check-list form and she marked which things on it we needed. We showed her our tourist cards or FM-Ts. You have to get them stamped after you pay a fee at the bank, and we had done that immediately after getting the FM-Ts last December. She said we didn’t have the right stamp. We said we had done it. It began to look like a confrontation, so I said that if we had to pay the fee twice, we would. She said don’t worry about it.

She barely glanced at the bank statements I had downloaded from the internet, other than to say they looked fine. They were on pink paper with a black ink cartridge that was barely printing a medium gray. No problem, she said, other than that we needed two copies — one for Kelly’s application and one for mine.

She said that Kelly was changing his status from tourist to rentista. Did I also want to be a rentista or did I want to be his dependent? Well, I’m a woman’s libber from way back, but I had heard that if you were a dependent, the amount of income you have to prove is half what it is otherwise, so being a dependent seemed like the way to go.

I did have one question, though. There’s a lovely phrase in Spanish, “Ojala que..” which could be translated “Would to God that…” It goes back to when the Moors ruled southern Spain and the “ala” in “Ojala” refers to the Muslim name for God, usually spelled Allah in English. This phrase takes the subjunctive verb, but my verb tenses generally fall where they may and so far relearning the subjunctive has not been a priority.

Anyway, my question was: Ojala que my husband will lead a long life, but if he died in Mexico and I was a dependent, would it be a problem to change my status to rentista at that point? She said no, I said call me dependent then. I did blanch a little when she said Kelly would have to write a letter in Spanish that he would be responsible for my moral character and actions, something like that.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I made a passing reference that we found the quality of daily life better in Mexico. Without missing a beat, she said, “Claro,” a commonly used word meaning clearly or obviously.

She went on down the list. We didn’t have an electric bill that proved our address, but we did have an old electric bill for our house, in the name of our landlord’s sister who lives in Californial because our landlord had never changed it when he bought the house from her. We also had an official paper that showed the bill is in the process of being changed to Kelly’s name. That wasn’t quite good enough. We will also need the rent contract, which we did have with us, and also a letter from our landlord explaining about the electric bill and including a photocopy of his ID. Ojala que the new electric bill will arrive tomorrow — it’s due about now — and we can skip this step. I think the landlord’s letter has to be typed.

I was pleased that she didn’t mark birth certificates as something we needed, as we had heard that some foreigners have been required to have them recently. We don’t have ours with us. We had gotten a friend at home to scan in our wedding license, but she didn’t ask for that.

She gave us a couple of daunting forms that have to be filled out PERFECTLY by typewriter, no photocopies or mistakes allowed, in duplicate. I looked at them and gulped.

I asked if there were people who helped foreigners fill out the forms. I knew that there were in other cities, but didn’t know about Queretaro. I said that for example, I didn’t know if my nose was concava, convexa, recta, o ancha

A little impatiently for the first time, she turned the paper around and looked at the list of 11 characteristics and rattled off which one I was for each. I had to agree that my complexion fisica, given a choice of slender, medium, or robust, was robust, but after a lifetime of being told that I have a big mouth, it was nice to know that — in official Mexican eyes, anyway — my mouth can go down as medium.

There was also a form to fill out in triplicate for each of us that we could buy at a stationery store and pay about$40US each at any bank, for getting the application started. There would also be a fee of about $100US each when we came back in with all the papers.

I wondered aloud if we should just wait till we come back to Mexico to do the rest, specially since we are leaving Mexico in a couple of weeks. No doubt about it, I was in total overwhelm. The Migracion lady gave me a brief pep talk. In effect, she said, look, you have almost everything. You just need a few little things, then you can come and go as you please and it will be better. But I do recommend that you come back this week with your papers done, so there will be enough time. We thanked her and we left with our fistful of new papers.

We bought the triplicate forms we needed, filled them out over brunch in a nice restaurant, and paid our first set of fees in a bank before catching a taxi to the bus station on the edge of Queretaro and then the second-class bus back to Bernal. It was a pleasant ride.

Back in Bernal, we stopped by the house of an American friend who knows about getting forms filled out. He wasn’t home, but just as we arrived at our door, he pulled up. He has a self-correcting typewriter and much better Spanish than we do, and will help us with the forms tomorrow. The flow continues.

Note: This is probably far more detail than most people will be interested in, but I imagine that foreigners planning to get an FM-3 may find it fascinating. Do remember that your mileage may vary. One nice thing about Mexican bureaucracy (or not-so-nice, depending on your experience) is that there seems to be more variation in how things are handled than Americans are used to.

We could have waited till we were out of Mexico to apply for the FM-3, but there were a couple of reasons we preferred to do it here. The Queretaro office is the one we will be dealing with in Mexico, since our base will be in Bernal, a town in the state of Queretaro. If we did all this in the United States, we would have to use the Mexican Consulate in Denver. An example of the variability I mentioned in the last paragraph is that each consulate is allowed to set its own standards. We’d heard that Denver was requiring larger income amounts than most places. Also, Denver is a 3 1/2 hour drive over the mountains from our house in Crestone.

Another choice would have been to wait to do all this till we come back on another tourist visa, but we are doing it this way because technically you can’t bring the same vehicle back into Mexico on a tourist visa in the same year. This isn’t always enforced, maybe usually isn’t, but we didn’t want to risk filling our little motorhome Cando full of stuff we want in Mexico and be stopped at the border.

Mexican FM-3 Visas: 2 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

We were going to catch an early bus from our village of Bernal to the city. The buses run once an hour and they take about an hour. But as it turned out, we weren’t ready till shortly before the 11:00 AM bus. We left the house, each with a small overnight bag, and started walking briskly towards the highway.

As we walked, we said hello to some neighors whom Kelly knows but I hadn’t met. They have a weekend place here and live in Queretaro. They followed us down the one-way street the wrong way (not that uncommon here) and called out to ask where we were going. When we said Queretaro, they offered us a ride.

So instead of the second class bus, we had a smooth ride into Queretaro with a delightful couple, chatting in Spanish about all sorts of things. They live not far from downtown and insisted on taking us right to the hotel we were planning to check out. As we circled through the downtown area, it seemed that every couple of blocks, the wife would mention that we were passing this church or that cathedral. I got a feeling of what it would be like for those churches to be living centers of one’s spiritual life rather than touristic places of interest.

Queretaro is a very nice city, both historic and modern, growing rapidly around its edges. We stayed at the hotel we’d planned on, and spent our time in the downtown area, walking here and there to mail a letter, buy an inkjet cartridge for our printer, buy some sandals, and generally get the lay of the land. We had been there once before with some other friends, but this time, with a map in hand, we got a good sense of the whole downtown area.

Around 2:00 PM, it was time for lunch, Mexican-timing. We wandered around looking at various places. Some were just sandwich-type places, others were too ritzy. We were looking at the menu board outside a likely-looking place when the owner, a gray-haired man, came out and chatted with us in English. We decided to try his place. We had a tasty bowl of vegetable and pasta soup in chicken broth, then a plate with a tender piece of chicken and some rice, beans, and salad. The beverage included was Agua de Tamarindo, or lightly sweetened tamarind water — a huge pitcher, very refreshing. Dessert was a small dish of ice cream. This was the comida corrida, or daily special, and it was 30 pesos ($2.70 US) each.

The owner had learned his very good English in Baja California, and as we chatted with him, we mentioned we were in town to see about getting our FM3 visas. As soon as there was a lull in the customers, he went into an office and made us a copy of a page in English, listing what we would need to get the visa! We were astounded. He explained that he’d had to help some foreigners get their visas before. Okay, there was a good reason we were in that restaurant!

There were a couple of things we didn’t know about — copies of every page of our passports and particular sizes of photos, black and white, face front and sideways, no earrings or glasses. Our host told us where we could get the photos taken, and gave us his card if he could help us any further.

So after lunch, we went over to the photography studio he had recommended. The woman said that she could have the photos ready for us by 11 the next morning. We explained that we had come in from Bernal and that we were intending to go to the immigration office early. She thought a moment and then said that the studio closed at 8:00 PM, and if we came at 7:30, she could have the photos ready for us by then. So we did and she did. The copies were no problem — downtown is full of copy places.q

Getting Our Mexican FM-3 Visas: 1 is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico