Hi everyone. I am in need of some advice and hoping someone can help. I will be arriving in Cancun from England soon and will be coming with a 2 week return ticket, however i plan to stay in cancun for an extended period of time, ie 3 months. I have plenty of savings behind me but i am just wondering where i stand on not getting back on my return flight? I have been informed that as long as i go to the immigration office within 28 days with a bank statement and extend my FMT for 90 days and pay the fee i will be ok. Is this correct? Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Thanks
You should be able to extend your FMT to give you a max of 180 days with no bank statement required. Try and ask for as long as period as possible when you enter the country, if you can avoid immigration hassle by having to extend your FMT then I would.
Thanks for your reply Steve. Can you just clarify one thing for me, when i fill out the FMT on the plane can i put that i am staying in the country for 90 days? Will i then get questions at the airport once i land as to why i want to stay for 90 days? Thanks again, i am just confused with all this immigration thing and don't want to get myself into any trouble!!!
No, don't fill out the number of days you want to stay when you fill your form in, that is the immigration officials job and it may well prove counter productive if you do. Just talk nicely to the officer when you go through immigration and explain your situation, it might work it might not.
The key with Immigration is to be super polite. If they don't want to give you the days you need then go downtown and get an extension from that office. But if you are polite with the official in the airport it goes a long way.
I travel frequently back and forth between the US and Mexico, usually entering at the Cancun airport. I always enter the number of days I plan to stay, never more than 2 or 3 weeks, but the officer always just automatically puts 180 days, even if I indicate I am just staying for a long weekend. I think to give 180 days automatically is pretty standard. The least I have ever been given is 90.
Agents have discretion to give you as many days, up to 180, as they see fit. Most are giving 180 days right now, but they often give less if they think something about you is weird, or if they suspect you are living here without proper papers. Some agents give fewer days simply because it's faster to write 90 that 180. When you have to check upwards of 1000 passengers a day you think about things like saving half a second by writing fewer numbers. If you read the form it clearly says that you should not write in the space for number of days, that is for the agent to do. If you write in the space that is reserved for agents you annoy them. It's not in your best interest to annoy them, trust me.
Last year when I was traveling to Cancun with my husband (who is Mexican & I'm Canadian) we were going for 4 weeks. We both had return tickets indicating a one month stay and filled out my paperwork reflecting the same. The agent instead marked my FMT down for 7 days!!! When we asked him (of course very politely) to change it because maybe he just didn't realize that it said 30 days everywhere else he pretty much told us too bad. All other times they've given me as well the usual 180 days. The good news to keep in mind though on the extremely off chance this were to happen...it really wasn't much of a hassle at all to get it changed at the office downtown. It took just a few minutes and they were happy to do it.
