Immigration policy in Costa Rica is a moving target, but the good news is that North Americans are for the most part given a warm welcome.  A Nicaraguan day laborer will be treated differently from, say, a retired couple from Vermont who just invested in a seaside bed-and-breakfast.  North American and European visitors, in most cases, have a fairly easy time of it immigration-wise; the most that a law-abiding visitor will have to deal with are bureaucratic headaches.

It used to be that people from Canada, the United States, and Panama could enter and exit Costa Rica without a passport, though they did need some form of identification, like a driver’s license.  As of April 30, 2003, however, all visitors to Costa Rica must travel with valid passports.

VISAS

Visitors from Canada, the United States, and most of Europe don’t need to apply for visas in their home countries but instead receive, upon arrival in Costa Rica, a stamp on their passport authorizing a 90-day stay.  When that 90 days is almost up, you can leave the country for at least 72 hours—maybe you’ve always wanted to visit the colonial city of Granada in southern Nicaragua, or snorkel at one of the Bocas del Toro islands in northern Panama.  After your three-day vacation, you cross back into Costa Rica and get another 90-day stamp on your passport.  This category of visa is called the B1, or tourist visa.

Residency

There are countless types of residency, from refugee to diplomatic status, but for the purposes of the average North american  or European, four the these will be of interest: permanent resident, pensionado (pensioner or retiree), rentista (loosely translated as “small investor”), and inversionista (large investor). 

In the shorthand of immigration agencies, the permanent resident visa is an A1 visa; pensionados and rentistas are subcategories of the A2 visa, and inversionistas have A3 visas.

Application Process

To Apply you can file the paperwork on your own, you can hire a lawyer to do it for you, or you can fill out the forms and gather the necessary documents yourself, then pay a tramitador to stand in line for you.  The whole process will be much easier if you start it in your home country, working with the nearest Costa Rican consulate: www.costarica-embassy.org

For Help

To receive help you can hire a reputable lawyer, or go through the ARCR (Association of Residents of Costa Rica), which has a very good reputation and has helped many an expat through the residency maze.  As of 2004, it charges US$735 for processing pensionado or rentista applications, and US$1,000 to process and inversionista application.  If you’re applying with dependents, spouses will cost additional US$365, and each child will be US$155.