We have just been through this process and had approval granted for a further 3 year residency. Note that your experience will probably be different, and you may be asked for things that I have not listed, and you might not be asked for things I have listed. In my (limited) experience, different offices and different INM staff have different requirements.
Below I have answered your questions with how it happened for us.
- Yes, we asked that today as we'd received approval for 3 of our kids. The INM officer told us to wait until everyone had approval and then come in and finish the process together once.
- I can tell you what we were asked for, but your experience may be different:
- INM Form filled in online, including a letter in the comments section formally requesting renewal of residency (in Spanish), and list of documents provided.
- Formato Basico
- Original and copy of Passport (personal info page)
- Original and copy of Resident card
- Receipt from bank showing payment of fee (see #3 below)
- Email authorisation form
- We also have chidren, so in addition to the above we had to include
- Original and copy of primary caregiver's Passport (in our case it was me, the father)
- Original and copy of primary caregiver's Resident card
- Primary caregiver had to sign all documents for minors
- We volunteer for a non-profit, so a few days after we submitted our application we received emails from INM asking for letters from the non-profit with details about the work we do. Had to supply separate letters for the two of us, despite that we do the same work. Two letters that included both of us were not accepted, it had to be one letter specific to my wife, and another specific to me.
- NO! I would advise against using bank form found online.
We found many forms online on the INM website, including the bank form. We paid the fee and completed the forms and took them into INM. We were told from the start that we should not have used any of the forms from the website as most are out-of-date, including the bank form. The bank account had changed (a single character in the account code was different) and our fee was deposited into the incorrect account. We had to pay the fee again ($2500USD for the 6 of us) to enable the application to proceed, and are now trying to get a refund which they tell us will take about 40 days.
Additional note: Don't try to submit a change of address at the same time - they don't like that. We had to submit the change of address, and then the following day submit the application for renewal. The reason given was that it was too much paperwork to do in one day.
The above was submitted with our initial application (and on their further request). Once we received notice that all 6 of us had been approved (see #1 above) we had to take the entire family to the INM office where we provided the following:
- 2 portrait photos of face, infantil sized 2cm x 2cm. They are VERY particular about the photos - no hair on face, no smile, must be able to see both ears etc.
- 1 profile photo, same size as above.
- Fingerprints of all 10 fingers (they do this in the office), for everybody getting residency - even the 3 year old!
- They printed out the Formato Basico info provided in the first interview and attach the fingerprints and photos to that.
We were told that the ID cards would be available 2 weeks after providing the photos and fingerprints.
When collecting our cards we needed to supply the following:
- ID for anybody collecting the cards - whoever signed the applications must be present with ID and must sign for the cards they are collecting. My wife signed for her card, and presented her ID (passport), and as I had signed the applications for all my children, I had to sign to collect the kids' cards as well as mine.
- The printed forms for each of us that were provided by INM when we first submitted our applications.
