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We recently had Does a US permanent resident need a tourist visa to visit Mexico?, which asks whether a Jordanian citizen who is a US permanent resident needs a visa to visit Mexico.

In fact, as it turns out, a US permanent resident never requires a visa to visit Mexico as a tourist, regardless of their citizenship.

There were votes to close as a duplicate of Is a visa needed for Indian citizens who are U.S. permanent residents to enter Mexico?, which asks the same question for Indian citizens, and so, based on this highly upvoted meta question, should not be a duplicate, because as written it does not apply to the current asker.

As it stands, we could be in for some hundred more questions, asked about citizens of Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, etc. By the policies described above, none of them would be duplicates.

This could be forestalled by having a "canonical" question which just asks about US permanent residents of no particular citizenship. Then the Indian, Jordanian, and all future versions of the question could be marked as duplicates of it.

Should localized questions with generic answers be generalized suggests that it is not appropriate to edit one of the existing questions to make it more general (by removing citizenship from the question).

Would it be appropriate to create a brand new canonical question, and repost my answer to it? If so, should I then mark the existing questions as duplicates of it? Or would this come across as "sniping"?

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    Yes, Nate, indeed. Create a canonical and then input an awesome answer. If you prefer to have another member compose the question (i.e., paying it forward), there are folks in chat who may liaise with you. By all means go for it.
    – Gayot Fow
    Commented Aug 15, 2017 at 17:07
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    And I agree, as well.. you could make it even broader, as in addition visa free for permanent residents in half-a-dozen countries, Mexico allows visa-free entry to a vast number of nationals, and for many purposes (tourist, transit, business)... and everyone else gets to TWOV through Mexico City (under controlled conditions)...
    – Giorgio
    Commented Aug 19, 2017 at 20:39

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Yes, please create a new canonical and mark all the previous questions on topic as duplicates.

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It's definitely a good idea to create a brand new generic question and to provide links to it wherever relevant.

I would question the wisdom of closing existing questions as duplicates, at least if they have already been answered and voted on. It achieves nothing and makes it more difficult to provide alternative answers should an existing answer prove incorrect or outdated.

Incidentally, more specific questions still have value as they make it easier to search the material and understand which rules apply in a way canonical questions do not.

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