On your flight to your vacation home in Puerto Vallarta, you’re likely accustomed to having the cabin crew distribute paper tourist visa cards to complete prior to your arrival at the airport – if they haven’t run out or didn’t have any available on the plane prior to departure, causing your arrival process to take longer as you stand aside in the airport to complete the tiny data entry boxes. But there is good news for travelers to Puerto Vallarta, with the recent announcement that the Multiple Migratory Form (FMM or more commonly called a “tourist visa”) has been eliminated.
For tech savvy visitors that had been filling out their FMM visa application online, there is also no longer a requirement to complete a digital version. To replace both digital and paper forms, immigration officers will now simply stamp visitor’s passports upon arrival and use stamp dates to track entries and exits.
There are several benefits to this new system:
- The arrival process has been streamlined and long immigration lines at the Puerto Vallarta airport have been considerably reduced. What may have taken an hour during peak traffic times at the airport, now takes about 10 minutes.
- The elimination of paper forms is a much more environmentally friendly advancement.
- Vacationers or those enjoying their second home in Mexico, don’t have to worry about inadvertently misplacing their tourist visa, which would result in difficulties when exiting the country and require fines to be paid.
Something to remember when arriving to Puerto Vallarta on a tourist visa, is that your length of stay is limited to 180 consecutive days until you have officially overstayed your visa, and through the passport stamping system, Mexican immigration will still be tracking your time in the country.
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