News

On April 30th, the new migratory procedures manual of the Instituto Nacional de Migración came into force.
The new manual signifies an important improvement towards a better migratory regulation in Mexico. It allows for online applications, specifies and combines many procedures that were insufficiently or inadequately defined by the previous manual and is written in a clearer, better structured form.
One of the most important consequences of the change is that many procedures have been notably simplified.

On August 21st, a reform to the General Law of Population was promulgated. Before the reform, this law established prison penalties to the foreigners that entered or stayed in Mexico without authorization or with an expired one. These penalties were rarely imposed and now have been totally put out of practice. Nevertheless, it is our opinion that the most important issue in this reform is that the renewed article 118 of the Law gives a legal base to the procedure of regularization for undocumented immigrants.

The Federal Law of Fees (Ley Federal de Derechos) was reformed in 2007 to make the Mexican Government able to charge the passengers of cruise ships for the expedition of the migratory category of Local Visitant. The charge is for 56 Mexican pesos and was due to come into effect by July 1st. Nevertheless, the Mexican Government has not finished the administrative implementations to begin charging the passengers, so this new charge has been postponed until October.

On June 5th, 2008, it was published in the Official Diary of the Federation, the Decree by Which Mexico recognizes the competence of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CMW), which is a Human Rights Body of the UN. When at least ten countries have accepted the competence of the Committee, it will be able to receive individual complaints from individuals against the Mexican Government. More information here.

Mexican immigration is regulated by the General Law of Population. Probably very soon a reform to this law will be promulgated. The purpose of the amendment is to eliminate some articles that are not used in practice, especially those which refer to prison penalties. The reform could also create a new migratory category for FM3: “temporal worker”, designed for peasants, building workers and service providers.

Starting from March 31, 2008, the Mexican government offers great conditions for New Zealanders to work while they holiday in Mexico. A FM3 will be given to the participants of this program with an authorization to do temporal remunerative activities, and with the statement: “Ciudadano de Nueva Zelanda, viajando bajo el Programa Vacaciones y Trabajo” (“Citizen of New Zealand, traveling through the WHS”). These conditions are reciprocal. More information here.

According to a 2007 report of the National Institute of Immigration, in January of 2008 should have appeared a new immigration regularization program, by means of which foreigners who live in Mexico without any immigration document could more easily regularize its immigration situation. More information here.

By the end of 2007, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the authority in charge of issuing the Mexican Naturalization Certificate, informed that only the immigration document FM2 can be used to prove residence in the procedure to obtain the Naturalization Certificate. That means, you must have a FM2 in order to apply for the Naturalization Certificate. More information here.