In May 2011, the Mexican government announced a revision of its immigration law that will change its current system of permits and visas. To date, however, the Intituto Nacional de Migracion (INM), Mexico’s immigration service, has not yet implemented the new law. When they do, we will update our Mexico Immigration section to reflect those changes.
Despite its Latin American ties, Mexico is located in North America. Bounded on the north by the United States and the south by Guatemala and Belize, Mexico also looks east to the Caribbean Sea and west to the Pacific Ocean. The fifth largest country in the Americas and the fourteenth largest in the world, Mexico’s 760,000 square miles land mass is about one-fifth the size of the U.S.
Mexico has a large and relatively stable free market economy with a GDP of over US$1 trillion, which places it fourteenth on the World Bank’s ranking of Gross Domestic Product (2011). The Legatum Institute (2011) ranked Mexico thirteenth out of 110 countries on the size of its domestic market, which is valued at nearly US$580 billion. Mexico is the third largest trading partner of the United States and represents the second largest export market for U.S. products and services.