Times Have Changed

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

Today I stopped by the immigration office in Monterrey.  I didn't get there until about 11:30.  Ten years ago there would have been a line a mile long and all the seats filled in the lobby where we waited for quite a long time.  Today, I signed in, went to the information desk and got taken care of in less than 2 minutes.  I also noticed that there were immigration officials walking around helping people, four people seated waiting to be helped and about 6 at various points at the counter.  Monterrey is a big city and we have a lot of people from different countries here working and tons of students, mostly in medicine.

I went for information to renew my FM2 "inmigrado".  My poor little book is ten years old and the cover finally fell off and there is room for one more stamp to exit and enter the country.  We want to make a trip to San Antonio in a couple of weeks but I want to get this done as soon as I return. Now they issue a mica or carnet instead of the booklet.

Amazing!  It used to be three copies of everything, bank statements, passports, FM2, on and on.  I'm not speaking for all transactions but this time around I need just one copy of my passport picture page, same for the FM2, 5 passport photos, the application and the payment.  Two weeks maximum.  It took me six months to change from an FM3 to an FM2 15 years ago.

Very smooth operation.  I'm sure offices vary around the country but I thought it was worth mentioning in times when Mexico is getting a bad rap.