Immigration Detects More Than 100 Marriages of Convenience
An unknown number of foreigners contract a marriage of convenience to obtain their legal residence and citizenship in Costa Rica.

Immigration officials know this practice exists, however, have their hands and can only act when there is overwhelming evidence.

The case in point is the detention of 110 foreigners detained in last weeks raid on a downtown hotel and casino who worked in the sex trade.

105 of the detained were later released when they are able to provide documents showing their marriage to a Costa Rican, though in the majority of the cases the women did not know the name of their spouse without having to check the document.

Only five of the detained were found to be illegal in the country, who will be deported to their country of origin this week, according to immigration director, Mario Zamora.

According to immigration records the foreigners were from the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Nicaragua. Immigration officials say that one American national was among the group detained during the raid.

"We have to find a mechanism to close this opening. The problem is that the problem keeps growing", said director Zamora.

This is not the first time that a large number of foreigners have been detained in a raid and later released because can prove their legal status by way of marriage.

During the last six months immigration officials have raided a number of locales in Jacó and in San José, including the area around the bar known as Tierra Dominican, in downtown San José, where a large number of Dominicans gather.

In total 540 foreigners have been detained in the raid, of which only three were deported. A total of 340 were married to Costa Ricans.

"The majority of those entered the country illegally and the legalized their status by way of contracting marriage",  said Zamora.

Zamora added that he fears that many of the women are being exploited sexually by international groups, where the women are moved around from country to country and under a strict code of silence.

"It is feasible that some of these women are her under duress, forced to sex slavery", said Mario Zamora.

The immigration director said that they only action the immigration service can take is to closely look at each document and in the event they detect any irregularities in the document or errors in the process to obtain their legal residence by way of marriage, their residence will be annulled.