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Hound Dog

Nov 25, 2010, 7:37 PM

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Riding The tail Winds and Eventually Arriving on the Tarmac

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Finally, after 68 years on the planet, a reason, finally, this American Thanksgiving in 2010 to be thankful on an American holiday ordinarily so corny as to be embarrassing. Well, today, we gave up the ordinary annual American Thanksgiving dinner and drove up to Guadalajara from Ajijic to confront the bureaucratic hordes at the Palacia Federal and, once again, after several misspent attempts over three months, petition for inmigrado status and I´m a sumbitch if, by God, we did not actually achieve that long sought and difficult process of transitioning from FM-2 status to "inmigrado" after living in this country almost constantly for ten years which is the equivalent of permanent residency in Mexico and forever shucked the onerous annually renewable FM-3 and FM-2 status we have lived with and been burdened by for all these years living here and now we are permanent residents of Mexico with no strings attached and that is the end of that nightmarish string of expensive events that led us to this point and no longer will we be required to deal annually or ever again with the INM functionaries and their arbitrary rules applied indiscrimantly and illogically and the next move, by God, is to achieve Mexican citizenship but that is icing on the cake. The inmigrado status changes everything and I kid you not. This transition is huge and changes everything in terms of the way you as a foreigner will be viewed if you achieve it I promise you - especially when you are out in the boonies where they don´t know you from Adam´s housecat and can throw your sory ass into a regional hoosegaw that will be etched in your memory forever .

We arrived in Mexico in the spring of 2001. Became FM-3 holders then switched to FM-2 status in 2005 and on to - not so simply - believe me - inmigrado this afternoon almost three months after applying for that status from FM-2. It ain´t as simple as you think these days, folks and I am amazed we accomplished it without, by the way, the help of any facilitator leach.

Any questions?

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Nov 25, 2010, 7:45 PM)

Rolly

Nov 25, 2010, 7:44 PM

Post #2 of 6 (4217 views)

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Re: [Hound Dog] Riding The tail Winds and Eventually Arriving on tha Tarmac

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Congrats! I'm sure the folks at INM will miss your annual visits as much as you will miss them.
I hope I live long enough to join you in saying goodbye to them,
even though my office is never busy, and the agents are very friendly.

Rolly Pirate

E-visit me http://Rollybrook.com
On Facebook as Rolly Brook

Hound Dog

Nov 25, 2010, 8:21 PM

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Re: [Rolly] Riding The tail Winds and Eventually Arriving on tha Tarmac

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Rolly:

I would have said before this morning when I left the Guadalajara Federal Building in a state of extreme elation with our inmigrado papers intact, having expected upon arrival, based upon previous experience, to , once again, have been rejected for any number of frivolous and nit-picking reasons, and have been expected to return at considerable personal financial and emotional expense, to that overcrowded and airless hellhole to wait in endless lines with countless other dejected supplicants in order to prove some pointless issue once again that, let´s say for instance, I was perhaps not who I claimed to have been for the past ten years or for any number of previously undiscernable reasons or other miniscule isues as every functionary within 3,000 kilometers demonstrated modest capability at creating a gulag I would never escape and then, out of the clear blue, after 2.5 months of torture, the bastards approve our applications. Had it not seemed entirely inappropriate and unseemly and also might have killed me. I would have done a cartwheel upon advisement that our application had been approved which was not among my expectations this morning.

As for the environment among INM offices from Lerdo to Guadalajara, it ceratainly must be significant that the Jalisco INM office in Guadaajara serves a huge metropolitan area with a population of an estimated 6,000,000 people more of less while that office serving Lerdo is less trafficked. I guess we could have changed our address to Chiapas and gone about this there but that would have been quite risky. INM frowns upon address changes.However, when we seek citizenship, we will probably go to SRE in Tuxtla Gutierrez as we think that office will be easrier to deal with than SRE in Jalisco. We´ll see and inform the members of Mexconnect as we learn more.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Nov 25, 2010, 8:25 PM)

La Isla

Nov 25, 2010, 8:40 PM

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Re: [Hound Dog] Riding The tail Winds and Eventually Arriving on tha Tarmac

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Congratulations to both of you! Your perseverance in the face of bureaucratic harassment from masters of the form is an inspiration to all of us, especially those who will aspire to inmigrado status in the near and not-so-near future.

mazbook1

Nov 25, 2010, 8:59 PM

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Re: [Hound Dog] Riding The tail Winds and Eventually Arriving on the Tarmac

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Congratulations, Dawg! Even though I was able to skip the whole FM2 and FM2->inmigrado thing under the older regulations, I know just how you feel. All those trips to INM, all that expense for a facilitator (my renewal date fell right at the height of my busy season, so the facilitator was a necessary evil…no "time off" for this old man), and then all those trips to the SRE office in Culiacán (which is a dang sight further from Mazatlán than Guadalajara is from Ajijic and has bureaucrats that make the INM folks seem like Mary Poppins) finally paid off, and I was able to claim my new status as a proud Mexican citizen. In Spanish I like to say, «Antes fui Nuevo Mexicano — ahorra soy ¡Mexicano NUEVO!»

Hey, I was even able to VOTE in the elections this year and satisfied my civic responsibilities by convincing my two oldest kids to vote (even though I was unable to convince their mamá, darn it!, but that's another story for another time.)

¡felicitaciones!

Hound Dog

Nov 26, 2010, 8:09 AM

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Re: [mazbook1] Riding The tail Winds and Eventually Arriving on the Tarmac

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... all those trips to the SRE office in Culiacán (which is a dang sight further from Mazatlán than Guadalajara is from Ajijic and has bureaucrats that make the INM folks seem like Mary Poppins).....

Funny you say that Maz. We live and learn through experience. The SRE people in Tuxtla Gutierrez seem, at least on the surface, to be amenable and accomodating and that is why, when we decide next year, to seek citizenship, we plan to do it there while, at or about the same time, changing our primary residence to San Cristóbal de Las Casas while keeping the house in Ajijic. Maybe we are in for an ugly surprise when we undertake this process of citizenship but that seems less important now that we have inmigrado status so if they make life miserable for us it will be on a less elevated plain of pain than the possible notion of jumping through hoops to get beyond FM-2 or the unpleasant alternative of reverting to FM-3 after all these years because of simple bureaucratic intransigence.

Our fellow correspondent from Guanajuato state informed us that, at least there, if one is over 65 one can become a citizen without the burden of taking a citizenship test and God knows, Dawg is over 65 for sure. We´ll see the way things go in Chiapas.

As an interesting aside, the Guadalajara INM office is crowded (and I mean crowded) mostly with Latin Americans and some Africans and Europeans seeking visas, not NOBBERS as was the case in Chapala. The NOBBERS in Guadalajara troop in behind their facilitators like ducklings trusting mama and I am not disparaging that as, we had agreed that had we had to have put up with more harassment from INM functionaries after that visit we might seek help ourselves. That did not happen, thank God.

Actually, having been a federal functionary (national bank examiner) in the U.S. for several years, I think I understand why the functionaries in El Rancho Grande (Guadalajara) are being so picky. Mexico City, where disrespect for El Rancho Grande is rampant, just turned over the responsibility of administering the inmigrado process to Guadalajara a couple of months ago and those DFérs would love to see the Ranchitos screw it up so those guys in Guadalajara are dotting " I´s" and crossing " T´s" like you´ve never seen before. I, as an ex-functionary - forgive them altough I am more forgiving today with mission accomplished than I would have been on Wednesday.

Another point. In Guadalajara, what one has to do is get to the INM office, say, no later than about 10:00AM in order to acquire a decent client number and then, according to the circumstances of the day, one may have to sit (or stand) around in great discomfort for anywhere from two to six hours with no air to breathe and here is a suggestion for an alternative way to spend your day. The area around the federal building in Guadalajara is within about seven blocks of the city´s magnificent cathedral and this is an old and, seemingly, ratty and run-down part of town but that is true but illusionary. The surrounding streets are filled with countless old mansions, many in ruins but of incredible interest so one can spend those hours educating oneslef by walking around these streets instead of sitting in that airless waiting room in agony and if one does that one will discover ancient Guadalajara architectural treasures one never imagined were grouped about what at first sight seems a seedy area. If you must be there; have some fun.

(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Nov 26, 2010, 8:41 AM)