Tom O’Malley: Letter from An American Working in Mexico-Truth! & Outdated!
Summary of eRumor:
A Letter from an American Working in Mexico that was written by a director with S.W. Bell in Mexico City named Tom O’Malley details Mexico’s complex immigration system and documentation requirements.
The Truth:
Tom O’Malley’s “Letter from an American Working in Mexico” has been in circulation since at least July 2010, and Mexico has made major changes to its immigration system and documentation requirements for those applying for Mexican citizenships since then.
The Letter from an American Working in Mexico details the attempts of Tom O’Malley, a man identified as a director at “S.W. Bell” in Mexico City, to obtain a permanent work visa called an “FM3.” And, although the post has been in circulation since at least 2010, the letter’s reference to “S.W. Bell,” otherwise known as Southwestern Bell, implies that the letter could actually date back to the early 1990s.
Southwestern Bell Corporation and France Telecom assumed an ownership stake of Mexico’s national telephone company in 1990. In 1995, Southwestern Bell changed its name to SBC Communications, Inc. Given that timeline, the letter’s reference to “S.W. Bell” appears to indicate that it was written between 1990 and 1995. Either way, we couldn’t track down the original author of the Letter from an American Working in Mexico, or pinpoint exactly when it was first published.
Still, the Letter from an American Working Mexico’s claims about Mexico’s immigration system appear to be a mixture of truthful and outdated claims. The first challenge is that letter refers to a “permanent work visa called an FM-3” that no longer exists. In 2012, Mexico issued new immigration regulations. These regulations created three different types of visas: visitor (formerly called FMM), temporary resident (formerly called FM-3 or FM-2), and permanent resident (formally called Immigrado).
So, the closest type of visa to the “FM-3 visa” described in the Letter from the American Working in Mexico would appear to be the temporary resident visa. And securing a temporary resident visa can be a complex process that requires lots of documentation and financial disclosures. In the end, many of the general documentation requirements for a temporary resident visa appear to align with the requirements of the former FM-3 visa described in the Letter from an American Working in Mexico, according to an official Mexico immigration site:
• Passport or identity document and current travel.
• A photograph.
• Be a national of the country or prove legal stay in the country in which the visa application is filed.
• Payment of rights for the issuance of visas
• Submit the documents proving any of the following assumptions:
• A) Economic solvency.
• B) Perform scientific research in jurisdictional waters.
• C) Responsive letter.
• D) Family ties (parents, minor children, spouses, concubines, under-age stepchildren) with Mexican or foreigner who has the status of Temporary Resident or holder of a Temporary Residency visa.
• E) It has real property in national territory.
• F) It has investments in national territory.
• (G) Under an international legal instrument for the mobility of persons.
In the end, we’re classifying this letter as both “truth” and “outdated.” Claims about the documentation requirements made in the Letter from an American Working in Mexico appear to generally align with documentation requirements. Still, the letter doesn’t reflect changes that have been made to Mexico’s immigration system over the last seven years.