Turning your FMM in when you leave?

It is not unusual for them not to collect. I assume you were in Mexico with a tourist visa. If you were a permanent or temporary resident of Mexico, the airline would have taken a portion of the FMM as part of their boarding process at the gate.

So, as long as you were here as a tourist, there is no problem. You paid your money when you came in. They do random checks as you are leaving.

My understanding of the Tijuana crossing is that is run by a for-profit group. You paid to use the bridge and border crossing with your airline ticket. The price of the FMM was included, too. Mexican immigration has a record of you returning to the US from the airline and the company that operates the border crossing bridge so they are aware you are no longer in Mexico.

Toss the FMM or save it as a souvenir.

Thanks.
My trip went smooth, and I want future trips to go smooth as well. Just didn't want them saying I never officially left the country, or that I overstayed my 6 months, so that causes problems when I go down again.

I know what you mean and you have some reason to be concerned. They are getting tough on people overstaying the tourist visa. Challenging you for overstaying would occur as you are leaving the country and they compare when you entered. I would be very surprised if they are entering your entry/exit based upon the paper FMM anyway. It is too labor intensive and too prone to data entry error to be reliable.

As an aside, some folks are trying to "live" in Mexico on back-to-back tourist visas and they are watching more closely because of this (and other reasons). I have friends and neighbors who have not bothered (or don't qualify) to apply for Permanent or Temporary Residency and have to make a trip to the US, Belize, Guatemala, or some other country. They used to return on the same day but they stopped allowing that many years ago and so people started staying out of the country for two or three days and this seems to work most of the time. However, earlier this year a neighbor was hit up for a bribe to re-enter after being gone for three days at the Belize border. I think that had more to do with the border wanting money more than wanting to restrict his entry again so soon.

So they do have your entry and exit and do look to see your patterns but this is information is coming more from the airline database rather than data entry from a bunch of FMM paper forms.

Only FMM cards are used by Mexican Immigration to track exits from Mexico. The CBX pedestrian bridge doesn't notify anyone about anyone using their bridge. Airlines don't tell Mexican Immigration who is on a national flight inside Mexico. On international flights the mandatory FMM cards are collected at the boarding door by airline staff and sent to INM -Mexican Immigration - to be entered into their data base.


There is a fast easy way to turn in a FMM card when using the CBX bridge to INM officers right near where you enter it from the TJ airport baggage claim area.

Hi, my personal impression was that when you enter Mexico they scan your passport and the FMM slip that you completed...so...probably in a computer data base.

When living you give the other portion of the FMM...so...I believe that they scan that portion and the circle is completed.

But I am not an expert in the subject...might be wrong.

Adios y buen dia a todos, GyC.

They don't scan the FMM card  because unlike a Residente Temporal and a Residente Permanente visa/card which they scan and passports which they scan on two different scanners a FMM card is blank -  no data - nothing to show up when scanned. The ink you write on a FMM card is the data. When entering this data into the INM data base an INM employee needs to type the data or it doesn't get entered.