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| By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The full legislature is expected to discuss and possibly vote Monday on the new immigration law that has been the topic of so many expat conversations.
A committee is believed to have eliminated many of the sections that expats considered burdensome, like the $5,000-a-month requirement to be a rentista.
Also trashed was a clause that would have made the law retroactive and forced current pensionados and rentistas to meet the new standards. E-mail and telephone campaigns from expats were responsible for changes from the original draft.
Now the financial requirements are $1,000 a month for pensionados and $2,500 a month for rentistas, with both amounts covering close family members. However anything can happen on the floor of the legislative plenario.
If the lawmakers vote, the action will be the first approval. The measure would need a second vote on a non-successive day to get full legislative approval. Then the bill goes to President Óscar Arias Sánchez for his signature. The rules would go into effect six months after the new law is published in the La Gaceta official newspaper. Those who obtain residency before the time the law is effective will do so under the old rules.
The current requirements are for pensionados to have a
| $600-a-month income and for rentistas an income of $1,000 a month.
The new law also requires all foreign residents to become members of the Caja Costarricence de Seguro Social.
Legislative aides released the plenario calendar for Monday, and it showed the immigration law in No 1 position, higher even than an administration bill against organized crime.
When Arias took office in 2006 he moved unsuccessfully to stop a new immigration law from going into effect. That law, passed in the last days of the Abel Pacheco administration was considered to be too harsh. It drew criticism from Roman Catholic Church officials, for example, because they thought their relief operations for illegal immigrants could be considered trafficking.
Officials called together representatives from a number of interest groups and social organizations to consider a new immigration law. For some reason, North American and
European expats were not included. That is why the higher requirements for pensionados and rentistas got into the initial bill.
For Arias and his advisors, the law is more than just about immigration. They lump it together among the handful of citizen security bills that are moving through the legislature. Among other changes, the final draft contains measures to reduce corruption in the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería. |
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