Tourist Permits (FMM)

If you are visiting rather than living here, you enter on a tourist permit — the FMM. Mexico has moved much of this online and to passport stamps at the big airports, but the land border into Baja still runs on the older process, and that is how nearly everyone gets to San Felipe.

The step people miss: filling in the form online is not enough. You have to stop at the immigration office at the crossing and get the stamp. The stamp is what actually starts your legal stay. Drive past it and you are in Mexico without status, however carefully you filled in the form.

That matters more than it sounds. Your Mexican auto insurance is generally void if you are not legally in the country, so an unstamped permit can turn a fender bender into a genuinely bad day.

Crossing at Mexicali, the immigration office is a short detour rather than something you pass through automatically — you have to deliberately pull over and go in.

Keep the permit with your passport and hand it back when you leave. Requirements and fees change; confirm the current process with INM before you travel.