How TO ENTER MEXICO ON TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT RESIDENCY VISA WITH NEW ELECTRONIC FFM

The paper FMM is beginning to be phased out at certain airports. This includes Mexico City, if you are coming in on a tourist visa you don’t have to do anything different it’s just one less step for you.

If you are coming in with your initial Temporary or Permanent Residency Visa in your passport that you need to exchange for a temporary or permanent residency card you need the FMM still in order to exchange for your card. So you have to get an electronic FFM or "FFME". I've detailed how to do so below.

What you need to do at the airport.

I flew in on Oct 9th, 2022 and this is what I had to do.

When going through immigration show them your residency visa in your passport right away. They will write right on there “Canje” and “30 dias” then they will tell you to scan a QR code at the desk which leads you to this website: https://www.inm.gob.mx/spublic/portal/inmex.html

This website is where you will fill out an electronic FFM to bring to your appointment. But you do not have to do this at the airport. Check that the agent wrote “Canje” and “30 days” on the visa and then you are all good to leave immigration.

What you need to do before your appointment at the immigration office.

Before your appointment at the immigration office you need to print off an electronic FFM. To do so go to that website above. When you enter you are greeted with instructions on what to do if you just need one for tourist purposes and here’s what it says for Temporary and Residential visas:

“In case you are a Temporary or Permanent Resident:

Temporary or Permanent Resident Card issued in Mexico.

Proof of address.

Note:

Digitize the documents and save them in JPG, JPEG, PNG or PDF format (maximum size 2MB) to upload them to the platform in the document upload section.

Once you have all the information and documents, enter the Pre-Registration platform, we recommend you consult the Help section so that you know the process.”

Click okay to bypass this pop up and create an account.

Once you verify your account via email go back to the home screen and click on the button that says Pre-registro y FMME

Then click Registrar Documentos

Then click Capturar Documentos and upload or take a photo of your passport.

Click okay then it will take you back to that same screen and click Validar Documento

It will take you to this form (I’ve explained it all in English below the image)

Tipo de Relación: This is who is filling out the form for you. If it’s for yourself put “Titular de la Cuenta”

Fecha Nacimiento: Your date of birth

Nacionalidad: Your nationality ie - Estadounidense for the USA

Clasificacion Documento: Ordinario (unless you are a diplomat or something)

Fecha de Expedicion: (this is the issue date of your passport)

Fecha de Vencimiento: (this is the expiry date of your passport)

Nombres: (put your first and middle name here)

Pais de Nacimiento: (Country of birth – ie - Estados Unidos de America for USA)

Tip de Documento: Passaporte

Numero del documento: (put your Passport number here)

You’ll then confirm both your passport’s date of issue and expiry

Apellido: (put your last name here)

Sexo: (Mujer for woman, Hombre for man)

Pais de Expedicion: (country where your passport was issued)

Confirm your passport number

Fill out the captcha and click okay.

This takes you back to the main screen but now you can see your document has been registered.

If it doesn’t take you back to this screen click the home button until you see this and click on “Pre-Registro y FMME” once again.

You will now see a drop down menu with your document listed on it. Select your passport document then click “Iniciar Servicios”

**Now the site advises to upload a proof of address, like a jpg or pdf, but it didn’t let me upload a pdf so I just went onto the next step and it let me generate the FFME without any address information. If you do choose to upload address information, make sure it’s the same one that you are going to use as proof of address at your immigration appointment.

Once you click on “Iniciar Servicos” you will see this dropdown. Click on “Generar FMME”

It takes you to this screen.

With "1. Ingresos highlighted", click on the line below and click that orange arrow to generate the FMME. Hit okay.

Then come back and highlight "2. FMME Descargar"

Now click the right green arrow to download your FMME.

Print out this FMME and bring it to your appointment at the immigration office along with your other documents.

The download looks like this image below, it’s important that it says “Canje” in the section "USO OFICIAL" and that under 7. Purpose of trip it says “other”. You should NOT be coming in as a tourist if you are planning to exchange this for your residency card. They give you 30 days on the visa as you have 30 days to start the process for exchanging this for your card.

**I haven’t done the process yet for turning my visa into my card but I’ll update this post once I do. I hope this helped you out and feel free to leave any questions in the comments :)

Also I checked with the immigration office at the airport and you used to have to complete an FFM form each time you left Mexico, get it stamped at the immigration office in the airport each time before leaving the country. Then you kept the other half to hand to customs when you re-entered. Basically doing the FFM process backwards of a tourist as they were tracking when you left instead of when you came in. The immigration office told me that holders of temporary and permanent residency cards no longer need to do this. We can come a go with that card as we please and it is automatically updated in their systems, no FFM necessary. Personally the next time I leave Mexico I'll be checking on this one more time a the immigration office in the airport before I leave just in case.