Foreigners Affected By Faulty Residency "Cédulas"
Every day, foreigners arrive at ther offices of Migración (immigration) in San José to give back their "cédula" that proves their legal stay in the country.

The reason is that the new document, which appears similar to the "cédula" of Costa Rican citizens, is being refused by banks and government institutions because the photo and personal information quickly erases.

The new cédula replaced the booklet that had been in use for some time, being more secure and a lot more difficult to duplicate.

The cédula is produced by special computer equipment that the immigration department purchased in 2004 from a Costa Rican company at a cost of us$2.6 million dollars and came into effect last February.

The idea is to give foreigners a plastic card that contains all the personal information that is difficult to copy and avoid fraud.

The document was to have a life of at least five years. However, it has become a total failure as the document begins to lose it usefulness within weeks. In some cases, the magnetic stripe has been reported to have fungus which corrupts the information, including finger prints.

The immigration service has issued 32.500 cédulas since February 20 of this year. As of last Friday, only 190 foreigners have returned their cédulas, however, the number of documents that potentially have problems are in the thousands.

The purchase of the Sistema Integrado de Emisión de Tarjetas was purchased from the Costa Rican consortium GTK-TL. Gerardo Lang, representing the consortium, admitted that the contract was awarded to them just as they were opening their offices in San José, when the government made a purchase of 30.000 cards, however, would not give any more details other than confirming the purchase.

The contract was signed by then Ministro de Seguridad Pública, Rogelio Ramos.

The first case of having to replace the identity card was on April 3rd, when a foreign resident of Puntarenas asked Migracíon to replace his document. Following that first report, within days came others.

The problem grew as more and more foreign residents began to have problems with their cards, being rejected at banks and public institutions, including at the airport, when returning to Costa Rica, where immigration officials found the cards defective.

Some foreign residents found themselves found themselves in a pickle as they tried to enter the country using the faulty cards, though no foreign resident was reported not admitted.