Colombia Asks Costa Rica For Removal Of Visa Requirements
The Colombian government is waiting on a decision by Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias, to lessen visa requirements for its nationals required by Costa Rica. In fact, the Colombian government is expecting a total elimination of the visa requirement completely.

The request was made four years ago to then Costa Rican president, Abel Pacheco, by Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe. A Colombian government spokesperson said that president Uribe has made the call again, this time to president Arias.

For the time being Costa Rica has only committed itself to studying the issue with the eye to possibly being more flexible with Colombians. Colombia argues that its internal security situation has bettered 100% and merits a less stringent regulation.

Uribe cites that the Colombian economy has grown 6% per year and that poverty has been reduced from 60% to 45%. "It is a concrete fact that there is no migration pressure", said Luis Guillermo Fernández, Colombian Ambassador to Costa Rica.

Currently there are an estimated 25.000 Colombians living and working in Costa Rica, most looking to Costa Rica for a better quality of life, a quality that their country denied them for the internal conflict of more than 40 years.

It is estimated that 30% of the Colombians are legal residents, another 30% are refugees and some 5.000 are in Costa Rica with some form of immigration irregularity, to say are in Costa Rica illegally.

"We have being seeing that a number of Colombains are now heading home", added the director de Migración de Costa Rica, Mario Zamora. "If we relax our immigration barriers, many Colombians that now live in the cities will be headed here. It will be their escape valve", said Zamora.

Zamora added that Costa Rica is studying the matter, but in no certain terms is it considering at this moment to remove the visa requirements for Colombians.

Colombia, Nicaragua and Peru are the only countries in the American continent whose citizens require a visa to enter Costa Rica and stay legally for up to 30 days. However, the requirements vary from consulate to consulate in each country.

For instance, Nicaraguans only have to pays us$20 and present their passport to obtain a visa.

Colombians, for instance, in addition to have to demonstrate their financial ability to support themselves while in Costa Rica, have to "justify" their tourist request and provide a certificate of not having a criminal history issued by the Dirección de Inteligencia y Seguridad (DIS) - Costa Rican secret service - or other competent judicial authority.

Colombians also have to have a return ticket home that does not exceed the 30 days.

An option that the Colombian Ambassador is proposing is to open the door to all Colombians who already have a U.S. visa.

Director Zamora, in defending the present controls, says that the aim is to curb the entrance of criminals. "A number of Colombians we detained had entered Costa Rica before the visa requirements were in effect", said Zamora, who added that this month the Costa Rican embassy in Bogotá will begin issuing electronic visas similar to those issued by the U.S. embassy.

The new visas are more secure as it will be laminated and stuck directly to the pages of the passport, replacing the rubber stamp that in some cases had been copied and applied falsely to passports.

The Costa Rican consulate visa section in Bogotá has the highest rejection rate of all other Costa Rican consulates around the world.