Nationalization

No, not us; our minivan!  Although we won't become a Residente Permanente until next fall, the folks who made the transition this year are scrambling and the feeling is catching.  Under the new types of immigration status, Permanent residents aren't allowed to drive their US-plated cars under the terms of the TIP we all used to bring them SOB with us.

Seems that Aduana (Customs) takes the 'T' of the TIP (Temporary Import Permit) very seriously.  If you're no longer a temporary resident, you need to drive a Mexican-plated vehicle.  That leaves a choice between taking your car back to the States and selling it (there are repercussions to that, i.e., registering it in Texas, insuring it, et cetera) then buying something in Mexico, or going without a car.  Costco would miss us, as we would miss them - and we're not going to travel there and back via a local bus with our arms full of supplies!

We had originally thought we'd go for the Permanente visa (I know it's not really a visa, but a different immigration status) this year, but decided - with our travel plans this year and next - that it would be simpler to remain a Temporal one last year on that level.

So we were sorta getting prepared to make the change over by nationalizing our minivan.  It's old enough that it's not worth too much and while we had saved up some money for the nationalization process, the total wasn't enough to buy the type of vehicle that we would have wanted.  And the van, with fold-into-the-floor seats, was just too handy - even if we no longer traveled to dog shows with all the paraphernalia involved.

We had managed to save up enough pesos to afford to nationalize the minivan using a facilitator who promises that both we and the van could stay in San Miguel and the change of status for the vehicle would occur without making the border trip.  Sounded  iffy and we were trying to verify that someone actually got his local plates for his car when we tried another facilitator who used  the time-honored process of a trip to the border, but it was a shortened trip - one day to the border, one day with the broker, and another day to drive back to San Miguel. Presto-bingo!

The catch came when we discovered that the fee (about the same as the first one) was due in dollars, not pesos.  Didn't want to lose money re-converting our pesos back to dollars, so have done some borrowing from our savings (and will do some mumbo-jumbo  to make it work, paying our rent from the actual pesos while tucking the rent funds back into savings as dollars).  On paper it looks like it will work, but it's more complicated than it sounds with loans between accounts and a pay-back schedule to follow to make sure the dollars are there when we need them!

The actual trip to the border will take place in October after we return from Puerto Vallarta.  Look for reports of our adventure.  The paperwork is another story....  Did you know that it's not common in Mexico to have two names on a car title???