also called canje de visa · exchange of immigration form · visa exchange Mexico
Mexico's in-country process of exchanging an entry marked for residence into the actual temporary or permanent resident card at an INM office after arrival.
Canje is the step in Mexico where you swap the visa in your passport for the actual resident card, done at an immigration office after you arrive, not at the airport. People confuse it with the FMM, which is just the tourist entry form; canje is what turns a residence visa into real residency. Miss the window for it and the whole plan can collapse, sending you back abroad to start over.
You get your residence visa stamped at a Mexican consulate, fly in, and relax thinking you are done. The window for the in-country exchange runs out while you settle in, your consular visa expires unused, and you are told to leave and begin the process again from outside the country.
A consular residence visa is not finished at the border. Missing the exchange window after entry can void the whole residency plan and force you to restart from outside Mexico.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
These are two stages of Mexican immigration.
The FMM is the visitor entry form recording how long a tourist may stay, now often digital, while canje is the in-country process of exchanging a residence-marked entry into the actual temporary or permanent resident card at an immigration office after you arrive.
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