Going to the Atlanta Mexican Immigration Office

The Long Winded Prologue

There is a whole 2-month saga leading up to the day that I went to the Atlanta immigration office. It involved a lot of arguing. Arguing with employers about the approval they gave in February, but now absolutely do not want to acknowledge. Arguing about laptops and how the one I have isn't the right type for the project I will be doing while in Mexico. Arguing about access to various kinds of data and how legal that is while I'm outside of the US.

The most stressful part was arguing with banks. You see, my whole life is digital. Mexico wanted wet ink signatures (Or business cards) from my bank. For these banks to do anything is slow. I have a couple of banks, but the only one I could use for this process was USAA. Shout out to my oldest aunt, who drove 5 hours to the nearest USAA. She did that only to learn that not only did they not have business cards in the whole bank (which is not something I'd ever encountered). Not only that, but there was no realistic way for me to authorize her to get signed bank statements or for me to validate who I was over the phone. Even with an acknowledged by the staff representative who had already validated that I was who I said I was. Why did I do this? They said they couldn't mail me a wet-ink signature, but I could have someone sign some statements in person. Capital One, a massive international bank, did not have this issue. I also only have an online-only account with them. Needless to say, I no longer bank with USAA.

Alas, I could not use Capital One for verification purposes. In the end, I printed out my bank statements and my paycheck stubs and hoped they would feel that this would be a lot of effort to forge with the other wet ink documentation around my finances.

Vikki, my facilitator, has been nothing but supportive in helping me. I abruptly changed my plans from a normal relocation tour to trying for temporary residency. This was about 2 months out from when I was supposed to fly out. She was super on the ball helping me figure out what documents I needed and calling around to see if the consulate could be flexible. She helped me secure an appointment one week out from my flight and coached me through what the process would be like.

The Day I Had To Show My papers

I made the decision to get my daughter's visa at the same time as mine. She's a donor baby. I felt that a consulate in the US would be more understanding of the lack of a father than a Mexican one. We showed up at the consulate about 45 minutes early. I wasn't sure what to expect, but somehow a metal detector wasn't on my list. We ended up going back to my car to remove my computer from my bag. I had planned to do a little work, but I didn't want the complication of trying to explain a laptop.

The security guard was extremely kind and ushered us to a waiting area. We wouldn't be allowed back to the visa area until our appointment time. My daughter spent the entire time trying to decide if she wanted to practice her Spanish on the kids running around or not. She decided against it lol.

At our appointment time, we went up to the visa area. I was surprised to note that there were multiple people with the same appointment time. One man went before us, and then it was our turn after maybe 10 minutes. I went in and I laid out all our paperwork. I had nearly 100 pages of printed out paperwork. If this wasn't enough to prove I didn't need to work in Mexico, then I don't know what was. Unfortunately for us, the computer wasn't working. The representative asked us to step outside and wait while she had someone fix the computer, so she could handle some other people who didn't need data entry. Fair. She also told us to go pay for the application, which we did.

We waited, perhaps 30 minutes? I chatted with the other people waiting with us. I walked in, and I was very confused. The representative asked a brief question about getting permission from the father, then glanced down at my daughter's birth certificate after I said there was no father. She didn't state anything further. We were asked about our accommodations in Mexico, why we wanted to go, and that was it. It was so brief that I didn't realize that we had been accepted. The representative asked both of us to take a photo. Then she asked for both of us to be fingerprinted. Then she told us to come back at the end of the day to retrieve our documents.

I was still confused. I thought she was still looking over the information. That taking a couple of hours seemed reasonable to me. I gave poor Vikki a heart attack since I said I would call when we had been accepted or rejected. She called me when I was on the way back to the consulate. I spent a couple of hours waiting period at a nearby friend's house. Vikki then told me that I had been accepted. That's why the photo and the fingerprints. Yeah, I felt silly.

We went back to the consulate, and I was somewhat surprised that the security guard recognized us. He'd seen a lot of people that day. We went up after the representative came back from lunch (we were early, as is my custom). She handed us our new shiny residency stamp, and part 1 of gaining Mexican residency was completed. If we ignore the part where I had to argue with my clients and banks, it was way more painless than I thought.

My facilitator told me that many people are rejected for lack of documentation, but if you show up with your documentation as they ask, it's a smooth process. That makes sense, but I'm not certain that I'd say that I had all the documentation they asked for. Just most of it. Still, I'm not mad about it. Now there was only packing for Mexico.