New Rentista residency guidelines?

I am not an attorney however, I did have a long conversation about this with Roberto Umaña who is an attorney who specializes only in residency.

There is unfortunately a serious contradiction in the income requirements for rentistas in this new law and until the byelaws are published I am told that nobody will really be able to tell you you exactly how it is to be implemented.

Roberto told me: “In trying to clarify this confusing matter, the answer that I obtained from the Legal Department of Immigration, was even more confusing. They stated that in their interpretation of the law, that article 77 was conceived for individual applicants only, so if you have the US$1,000 per month, that would suffice for a rentista.”

As soon as we know more, we’ll let you know by posting an article on the site.

Scott Oliver
WeLoveCostaRica.com

Regarding the Immigration August 12th law. Today’s Tico Times (16th June) had this to say.

Arias Administration Plans
To Postpone Immigration Reform
The administration ofPresident Oscar
Arias plans to send a bill to the Legislative
Assembly that would prevent the new
Immigration Law from taking effect in
August and delay it for at least a year.The
delay is designed to give the government
time to prepare for the costs ofimplement-
ing the law and examine aspects ofthe law
that have been criticized by the President,as
well as academics,religious figures and the
Ombudsman’s Office.
Mario Zamora,the new director of
Immigration,told the daily La Naci
n his
institution would have to spend ¢7 billion
($13.7 million) for the new police,infra-
structure and administrative reforms the
law demands.For example,the law would
require increasing the Immigration Police
force from 35 to 600.
Zamora added that the law,which
cracks down on illegal immigration
through measures such as increased penal-
ties for people who hire illegal immigrants,
includes eminently repressiveregulations,
and Arias administration officials would use
a delay to study reforms to counteract those
regulations.
Public Security Minister Fernando
Berrocal told the daily the government
would have to spend a fortuneto apply
the new law,and that he couldn’t under-
stand how the law could have been drafted.
The bill the Arias administration plans
to submit would alter Article 269 ofthe law;
the article states that the law must take
effect eight months after its publication in
the official government daily La Gaceta,
which took place Dec.12,2005.
Other measures the law includes are
greater freedom for police in their efforts to
find and remove illegal immigrants,deten-
tion for an undefined length oftime for
those suspected ofbeing illegal immigrants,
and changes to improve the efficiency of
Immigration (TT,Aug.26,2005).
Tico Times

James.

Very interesting, I guess everyone is waiting impatiently to see what happens. Is Mario Zamora any relation to Randall Zamora? Maybe some inside info!