Thread: Mexico: Foreigners targeted in driver's license shift

Foreigners targeted in driver's license shift
Written by Alex Gesheva
Saturday, 04 October 2008

A Jalisco driver’s license is now four times as expensive for many foreigners as it is for Mexicans.

While ordinary state licenses are valid for four years before needing renewal, a mysterious new law pegs the license expiration date for foreigners to the expiration date of each individual’s immigration visa.

Many foreigners will only be able to get a driver’s license for one year.For those with FM3 no-inmigrante and FM2 inmigrante visas, that means that a license will be valid for, at most, one year before renewal is again required. Instead of 400 pesos, a license will now cost foreigners a whopping 1,450 pesos every four years. That’s, of course, assuming the immigration process goes like clockwork and the license can be promptly renewed every year.

After a week of repeated requests for clarification, the press department at Jalisco’s Secretaria de Vialidad y Transporte (SVT) explained that no comment could be immediately offered on complex legal details such as when and why the law entered into effect, whose idea it was, and what options the licensing department will offer foreigners whose licenses expire while they wait for an immigration visa renewal.

The Reporter can confirm that the new regulations have been in effect since at least July 17. The SVT, however, has neither updated the fee schedule on its website (svt.jalisco.gob.mx), nor posted an explanation of the new rules. As far as can be ascertained, the regulation was not publicly released, at least not in any accessible format – many expatriates have learned of it through rumors, as unsuspecting drivers go to renew their licenses. Readers, however, can learn from Vialidad’s online manual that the organization’s principles include (#4) a government that informs; and (#7) social equality.

The lack of publicity could be the result of a law released before anyone really thought about logistics or implications. Sources with long memories say that the new law is actually a revival of an old, discarded system for issuing Jalisco’s drivers licenses for foreigners. In the present, however, workers don’t seem quite sure how it works.

When one foreigner called the department of licenses in Guadalajara and asked whether it was really true that a lost license valid until 2011 would suddenly be replaced with one that expires in October 2009, employees seemed stumped about the answer.

“Do me a favor,â€

Sounds about right. That's what they do.......no one matters but their own and what they can get from you.

If they can do it....WHY is it not Politically Correct for us to do it????????????