Don’t Delay Your Residency to Latin America

You want to move to Latin America.

Perhaps you are looking to stretch your dollar abroad in retirement.

Maybe you want to travel abroad as a youngster.

Regardless of your situation, you don’t know how to begin.

Therefore, you begin reading blogs about life in Latin America.

Picking up on tips.

And getting an idea of which areas in the region seem most interesting to you.

Maybe one of those areas is some city in Mexico?

Puerto Vallarta?

San Miguel de Allende?

Wherever it might be!

And, over the years, you find it easy to live in whichever city you pick without ever getting residency.

Riding on that tourism visa in a country, like Mexico, that allows visa runs like I wrote about here.

After whatever length of time, be it 3 months for a country like Costa Rica or 6 months for a country like Mexico, you have to leave the country.

Perhaps return home for a brief period.

Or go to another Latin American country.

Then you return to the country that you have been living in on that tourist visa for years or even decades now.

However, you now have a problem.

At the airport upon returning, the migration agent looks at his computer with the updated technology that shows who has been doing visa runs and who hasn’t.

The computer clearly shows you as someone who has been living in your respective Latin American country on a tourist visa without ever getting the proper approval to do so (residency).

Consequently, you are let into the country again on a very limited amount of time or out right rejected and sent away.

Frustrated, you ask the migration agent about your options.

And he tells you to “get residency already!”

Thus begins the research (or relocation to another Latin country – whichever you prefer).

The Residency Realization

When you began living in this country, the requirements to get official residency were so low.

Now?

They have gone up quite a bit and are out of reach as you can see here.

In Mexico for example, the financial requirements to get residency are tied to the minimum wage and the minimum wage has been increasing noticeably over the last 4 years.

How will it look 10 years from now?

And that’s just Mexico!

And Mexico is clearly one of the preferred countries for North Americans to seek residency given its relative location to the US and Canada.

But, over the years of living in Latin America, I have heard the same situation realized in other Latin American countries. 

Here's an interesting example with a new visa option possibly coming up with Colombia.

As you can see, the requirements for this specific visa are also tied to the minimum wage that is likely to always increase over the years.

And, in listening to other expats, this isn't just a Mexico or Colombia problem.

It does seem that plenty of countries down here, over the years, do become slowly more restrictive on who they let get residency through the normal path.

You might have qualified for the requirements back when you first began living down here!

But not anymore.

So what do you do?

Well, for some gringos, they choose to live here illegally basically and never get caught and never go home.

For others,it might not be a problem if they are just snow birds who only want to travel to Latin America during the winter. 

And for other gringos, they might get residency through “unique” ways like marrying a local and/or knocking up a local chick.

Truth be told, I have genuinely thought of knocking up a local chick.

A few days ago, I was in the metro of Mexico City and thought to myself – “what if I do knock up a chick before I head home? Is it such a bad idea?”

Obviously, having a kid is a big responsibility.

But I’m 27 and have been ever increasingly wanting to have kids also each year.

Much more than just wanting residency someday, I think it's also just some biological desire in me that is kicking in stronger to have children.

So it’s like knocking out two birds with one stone – get a kid to get that residency and also satisfy that biological urge to reproduce.

When I told my sister that a day or two ago, she said something along the sentiment of “you’re joking, right? You think breeding Latina gals is funny?"

"Yes, I do! And I'm tired pretending it's not!"

Scarface -- Rush, Rush Give Me the Yeyo

Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt