Reporters on the Job: Tangled in Mexican tape
January 12, 2009
Staff writer Sara Miller Llana has dealt with plenty of red tape since arriving in Mexico, so she empathizes with the 鈥渧ictims鈥� in today鈥檚 story.
鈥淢y work visa, which was only supposed to take a couple weeks to be processed, took four months. And until you have a visa here, you can鈥檛 do anything. You need it to open a bank account, get a cellphone, and - most important - get your furniture across the border,鈥� she says.
鈥淚n my neighborhood in Mexico City, you can show up at your favorite restaurant to find it鈥檚 closed because of some mysterious request for documentation or because they violated some procedure,鈥� says Sara.