Mexico has changed the paper FMM migration form, it is no longer issued upon arrival. These publications are no longer relevant.
Many people have an opinion about Mexico as a country where everything can be “solved.” This opinion is carefully supported on social networks, where they offer support in solving various migration problems. Not free, of course, and not cheap. Today we will talk about extending your «travel visa» Mexico, in other words, about receiving a new migration form FMM. Most often it is impossible to extend a tourist visa, but connections in the migration service and money supposedly allow this to be done. This is the case when when buying FMM, you buy air, without any risk for the seller and with a large potential risk for yourself.
The FMM migration form allows you to legally stay in Mexican territory within the validity period indicated on it. Forms can be picked up at any airport. The FMM trade has flourished for as long as the migration form itself has existed. More than 5 years ago, buying FMM made sense, because then the necessary people put a border crossing stamp in their passport, entered data from the form into the migration database, and when checked, everything looked legal. But then the situation changed. It has become completely impossible to record a border crossing without the crossing itself in the migration database, no matter how much you are assured otherwise. And FMM is linked to this record. Today you can still buy FMM, but there will be no data about it in the migration database. No entry in the database — no real form!
But you know nothing about, in other words, some kind of migration database. You only know that the legality of your stay in Mexico is confirmed by FMM — green piece of paper with marks from the migration service. There is a piece of paper — You have every right to be in Mexico. You pay 6 or 8 thousand pesos, or whatever they ask, receive a green FMM piece of paper and sleep peacefully. When flying from Mexico, you give this piece of paper to the airline employee, who also does not have access to the migration database and cannot check the authenticity of the migration form, and fly away calmly. That's it, the story is over, everyone is happy, no one was hurt.
I was not injured because no one checked the authenticity of the migration form. With the same success, you could live in Mexico without this form at all, and when flying out, pay a fine of 638 pesos, not 8,000, and fly away safely. For 8000 you have vitriol of air.
You're just lucky. There is no way you can check the authenticity of the migration form yourself. But the migration service employees can, who regularly carry out migration checks in the most unexpected places, at crowded intersections, at the entrances to cities, on intercity buses, at bus stations and at airports. Having scanned the FMM with a scanner in the mobile application, they will immediately find out that the form is fake, since it is not in the migration database. Fake form — This is not just a violation of the migration regime, it is a crime. Deportation is inevitable, and with it a ban on entry.
You're just lucky. You can live illegally in Mexico for years and never encounter an immigration check. You even have the right not to know that they exist at all. But we regularly communicate with people who were taken to the migration station, either because at the time of the check they were unable to confirm their migration status, or because their FMM migration form did not pass the check. Our work is like this. At the same time, the detainees did not understand at all what was happening, because they had a green piece of paper.
If and other negative consequences. Before changing your passport, you will never be able to contact the migration service with a request, for example, to obtain a Residence. As soon as an entry stamp is found in your passport, which never existed, you will receive a visa. I am glad that employees of the line offices of the migration service do not have the authority to detain or apply sanctions to illegal immigrants, and having received the order, they are able to calmly leave.
And the person who sold you a fake FMM does not risk anything at all. If you lived in Mexico as long as you planned and then flew away calmly, everyone is happy. If you are detained by a migration check, it is your fault, not his, and the situation can no longer be corrected. And when you have already been expelled from Mexico, there is no point in triple the showdown with the seller.
Yes, of course, we are describing isolated cases, and therefore, in your opinion, we are «increasing». In addition, we «pumped up» stories about cases of denial of access to Mexico, even before these cases became widespread, and government agencies closed the sale of tours to Mexico to citizens of a number of countries.