It’s been a long five years.
Grinding every day for your asshole boss back home.
Never getting any sick days.
Getting yelled at every other day in the office.
Plenty of time in traffic going back and forth between the office and home.
Then, with the greatest of luck, a virus spreads through the planet.
Scaring the living shit out of anyone who watches the TV.
And while that surely seems scary, it comes with a blessing.
For one, you and your wife both get 3,400 dollars in “stimulus checks” from the government over a year.
And your boss is having you work remotely now for the time being!
With your freedom to work away from the office and your newfound wealth that will last generations, you decide to take a vacation with your wife.
But where to go?
With most of the world’s borders closed, you have limited options.
A vacation to North Korea’s finest beaches is unavailable at the moment.
But you know who else has awesome beaches?
Mexico!
Bags packed.
Passports in hand.
The laptop for work coming along for the ride.
After all, what makes a great vacation on the beach like checking work emails?
And you and your wife soon find yourselves on a plane headed towards Cancun.
An Interview with the INM
Thinking you are well prepared for your trip with a return flight in 30 days, hotel reservations and a printed out form of the Mexican tourist card (FMM) in hand, you walk up to the migration agent in an airport in Mexico to request entrance into the country.
Immediately, the agent rips the card in half (that was already paid for online) and demands that a new one be filled.
Any reimbursement for the money spent on the card?
Fuck no, gringo!
Frustrated, the couple fills out some new FMM cards.
“How long will you be in Mexico?” asks the agent.
And the couple provides the full documentation showing a return flight in 30 days.
With no previous history in Mexico and only requesting 30 days and a job to return to back home, they clearly are not intending to live in Mexico.
Still, upon hearing such an excessive amount of time requested, smoke begins to come out of the agent’s ears.
His face turns red.
He snaps a pencil.
Teeth grinding.
And the words “gRiNgO!!! gRiNgO!!! PINCHE GRINGO!!!”
The agent begins foaming at the mouth in rage.
A case of severe autism at play for anyone to see.
His whole body shaking.
Almost like he’s having a stroke?
And he grabs the pen.
Begins smashing it against the FMM.
Scribbling across the whole document with severe autistic rage at the sight of two foreigners who wish to have 30 days in the country.
Almost hyperventilating, said agent begins sobbing out “HOW…HOW….HOW DARE YOU GRINGO!!!”
The couple looks confused.
But the agent is done now.
He calms himself.
Returns the FMM to the couple.
Calls the next person from the line to walk on over.
Well, despite such a peculiar incident, surely the couple got the time they needed, no?
Not exactly.
But if only they were actually so lucky…
What the Fuck Does My FMM Say?
Truth be told, said couple might actually be lucky if they could at least read the damn card.
Not everyone can!
Here’s some examples of what I mean.
Can you decipher any of the letters in the screenshots above?
They can only be somewhere between 1 and 180.
Technically, they should be small enough to fit into the tiny white box at the bottom of the card but INM agents in Mexico can’t even they do that right necessarily.
Not to mention the illegibility of the numbers themselves.
And that’s ultimately the story of the day for those curious.
The story being that of INM agents straight up fucking with foreigners just because.
For those who don’t know, Mexico has seemingly taken quite a heavier stance against any foreigner wishing to come into the country.
Reports of foreigners being told that the agent can’t give more than some random number of days like 30 or 90 even though the official rules allow UP TO 180.
Or how foreigners come in with prepaid FMM cards only to have them ripped up.
Any reimbursement as I asked before?
Nada.
Outside of that, you got those who say that some agents are demanding to see accommodation for every single day in Mexico.
Obviously, said agents have always been too poor to never have taken a long trip to another country or else they’d know that, logistically speaking, most people aren’t going to book reservations for places 90 days in advance as they travel around the country.
Or how, as you saw in the last screenshot in the last section, folks will be asking for something as little as 15 days but only getting 7.
At that point, the agents of the INM are just fucking with you just because.
And also fucking with locals trying to make money from tourism as that same screenshot shows.
The rationale from their end being to end perpetual tourists who live in the country.
Though many of the behaviors are not really necessary for that because they only need to target those doing visa runs and not random tourists.
Almost seems like Mexico isn’t capable of enforcing its own policies efficiently.
Well, what else is new?
Mexico? Efficiency?
A bit of an oxymoron.
And, for the icing on top, we have what we can see in the last screenshots shot.
Agents seemingly scribbling gibberish onto FMM cards that look nothing like numbers.
The consequence being many tourists confused as to how many days they are permitted and having to spend time going to some random INM office asking for clarification.
Wow Mexico – can’t even do that right, huh?
Writing numbers a bit too difficult for you?
The inefficiency never surprises me.
But, truth be told, it’s funny too.
The Final Points
At some point, you just laugh it off.
And, for me personally, it’s easier to laugh because I’ve come to be accustomed to locals in Mexico not being able to do simple things like write numbers properly on a card or enforce policies normally.
But also because it’s not my issue and so it’s easy to laugh away at it.
I’ve been in the country a long time now and haven’t been to an airport in years down here.
So everything I’m reporting on is reciting information coming out online.
The bottom line being that, if you are coming to Mexico, expect that maybe some frustrations that shouldn’t happen.
Like the agents ripping your prepaid card up, purposefully giving you less days in a very petty manner (like if you want 30 and you get 10) and possibly not being able to read whatever gibberish they write on the cards.
Being honest with you, I wouldn’t travel to Mexico these days.
I like this country a lot – it has a lot going for it.
But, given the fact that half of the INM agents seem to have developed severe autism and can’t enforce their policies normally, I wouldn’t plan a vacation to Mexico.
I currently live here for the time being so it doesn’t impact me too much just yet.
But for someone wanting a vacation as of now in 2022 to some place like Cancun or maybe travel the country for 60 days?
Well, the amount of time you’d get seems very uncertain.
So why risk wasting hundreds of a few thousand dollars when any other Latin country can give you a guaranteed time at the beach or whatever you want to see in Costa Rica, Colombia, etc?
And, while I know that there are no guarantees with traveling, I can only speak from my experience.
Having been to 30 countries, no other country I’ve been to has been so odd with its migration department like Mexico has in the last year.
It’s always been as simple as “here are the rules and, unless you fit special circumstances, you can reasonably expect this amount of days.”
Without some idea of how many days you’ll get, why travel to that country?
Especially if petty officers are running out giving slightly less days (like 7 for 15) for no reason other than to fuck with the tourist.
Not to mention stories like this here showing other incidents of fuckery that the migration agents are causing these days.
"YEAH! Wendy and I went to Cancun for vacation and ended up in a jail for no reason."
To be fair though, most folks are not ending up in jail (especially if they are legal) but still...
Not a very good look is it for tourism to the country, is it?
The worst experience I ever had with a migration agent anywhere was one time in Germany when the migration agent didn’t like me checking my phone and one time in Uruguay when the agent made fun of my accent in Spanish.
But, in either scenario, none of the issues were present.
Either way, I imagine this will be a temporary issue.
In part, I just wanted to poke fun at some of the dumb scribblings of INM agents who seem to be having seizures at the moment of writing those numbers.
However, I’m sure things will go back to normal in a year or less as, fingers crossed, some direction comes from above to teach Mexican migration agents to learn how to write numbers properly or not be vindictive cunts on random tourists who aren’t even doing visa runs.
At the very least can we send these folks back to elementary school to learn how to write numbers again?
Surely an elementary school education was necessary to apply for a job at the INM!
Or am I wrong?
Anyway, jokes aside, you get the point.
Leave any comments below in the comment section.
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Best regards,
Matt