What is really behind the immigration law proposals?

By Eric Robinson

The proposed changes in the immigration laws being debated by the Costa Rican Asamblea Legislativa leave me concerned. At a time when the global economy is weakening and pensioners are hard hit, these laws are the last thing senior foreigners need, requiring to prove they have a guaranteed dollar income 333% higher than the present requirement (from $600 to $2000 per month). Now I could be sarcastic and warn you about those terrible 'pensionados', but please, give me a break, are foreign pensioners a big problem in Costa Rican society? Do they form a higher percentage of armed robbers, or violent rapists, or dead-beat fathers, or are they usually more the victims than the culprits in crime, more giving than receiving?

And as everyone is seeing the first signs of economic belt-tightening, the proposed law also wants to raise the guaranteed existing income of other foreigners now living in Costa Rica by 500% from US $1000 to $5000 monthly. Though it is a younger group than the pensionados, are they generally a burden to Costa Rica or an asset? Are they a high crime group? Do they tend to take from families in Costa Rica or support them? Do they take work away or tend to invest their limited resources, abilities and ideas to create work?

Consider visitors in general to Costa Rica. Rather than the hedonistic self-pleasuring, drunken party animals that frequent Cancun, Jamaica and Miami, visitors here tend to be of a higher order. Most use the internet to make intelligent and exciting vacation plans which include learning experiences, volunteer work and adventure tourism, quality visitors enjoying a quality country.

I advise Adventure Inn guests to pick up their garbage, and trod lightly in the jungles, not to barter for souvenirs too hard, and to tip well for good service. Plaques hanging in each of my hotel rooms suggest visitors observe, listen, understand and empathize rather than see, hear, take pictures and boast, but generally I feel I am already preaching to the converted.

Do the law makers pushing for these new financial requirements of foreigners (several times the average national average income) think that visitors generally setting these examples of clean living have no merit? Do these same law makers not realize that visitors open the eyes of Ticos to what a wonderful country they have, and thus their need to protect it? Do they not see the money coming from foreigners as spreading the wealth and offsetting the balance of trade with other countries?

I have been clamouring for an answer beyond just plain stupidity, as these proposed immigration laws don't make sense, especially as the world economy clams up.

Perhaps there is more behind it all, like a prejudice or xenophobia against foreigners in Costa Rica, maybe a bit of jealousy disguised as patriotism that foreigners, though they often offer more to Costa Rica than Ticos themselves, need to be held back, or better, forced to leave Costa Rica by imposing sudden and unreasonable new financial requirements on them. Foreigners aren't afraid to take a chance and make something positive happen that often benefits Costa Rica. Foreigners take the time, and put out the elbow grease to plant lovely gardens around their homes, and pick up litter, and attempt to recycle and make the country more attractive.

Perhaps the macho law makers (who are in the vast majority) are upset that many pretty young Ticas openly express they can't deal anymore with the lies from their unfaithful, dead-beat Tico husbands and boyfriends, and prefer an older stable (foreign) man with the finances and basic integrity to support their families. Would this have anything to do with it?

After the sudden government closure of the twenty year, half billion dollar Villalobos Brothers high interest investment company in 2002, many of the 6000 foreigners that lost their principal investments plus monthly interest payments, needed to leave Costa Rica, moving back into their children's basement. Countless Costa Rican women and children who had grown accustomed to the support, now found themselves penniless and needing to survive in a welfareless society. I remember mothers and young children being forced to move to dangerous slums, the only residence they could afford, and students having to quit school because of the cost of bus transportation, uniforms and supplies. And because of a lack of opportunities, many mothers had to enter or re-enter prostitution.

The devastation caused by an over-zealous, maybe xenophobic government reaction, was anything but pretty. One of the six thousand investors, a French Canadian, was being investigated for laundering a relatively small amount of drug money by the RCMP, so the Costa Rican government closed the whole thing down, but giving the now fugitive 'Christian' director a chance to absconded with 99% of the money, now hidden off-shore. Well done!

Anyway, the negative impact of these proposed immigration laws will be of far greater magnitude than the results of the Villalobos closure. These laws will hurt many Costa Ricans financially, as one government director estimated 70% (between 40,000 and 50,000) of existing pensionados and rentistas will be unable to provide evidence of such a high income when they apply to renew their residency. If only 30% of the existing pensionados and rentistas remain, eight or ten times more Ticas and their kids who now depend on a foreigner for support, will needlessly suffer. Income to many businesses that count on serving and selling to foreigners will be reduced considerably. And the tax revenue generated by foreigners will fall precipitously.

I agree that foreigners who severely break the laws in Costa Rica, or become a strain on a society that has trouble looking after its own, should be made to leave, one strike and you are out, go home, Costa Rica can't afford you. But to needlessly and artificially raise the financial requirements beyond the ability of some forty or fifty thousand foreign residents peacefully and productively living here is unreasonable, not very well thought out and hints of jealousy, prejudicism and/or xenophobia.