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First, there is no legal requirement to be out of the country for six months either once your 90-day tourist visa expires or once you have filed your application for legal residency. Take that six-month thing out of the picture.
Once you have all the required documents, your attorney will submit them to Immigration for processing. Shortly thereafter, Immigration will send your attorney a letter which says that your application is [u]complete and can be acted upon[/u], and they’ll assign a file number. It’s not approved yet; it’s just acknowledged to be complete and actionable.
The law requires Immigration to act on your application within three months, but they rarely hit that target, so historically the [u]practice[/u] has been that, once you have that letter from Immigration, the 90-day tourist visa is no longer enforced. Since it’s their fault, not yours, that your residency application hasn’t been acted upon, they have not required you to leave the country and re-enter to receive a new tourist visa.
[b]BUT[/b], that has been their [u]administrative practice only[/u]. It’s not pursuant to any provision of any law. In fact, they have no legal authority to waive the requirement to obtain a new visa.
Immigration looks very negatively on violations of the visa restrictions (overstaying your visa, that is). If you overstay your tourist visa while they’re processing your residency application, there’s a chance it could complicate your relationship with them and that is not in your best interest. Don’t stir things up!
The safest approach, therefore, is to have your documents submitted to Immigration as early as possible and to leave the country before the end of your current tourist visa if only long enough to get a new one.
It’s also important to know that Immigration is beginning to crack down on “perpetual tourists” who leave and re-enter time after time just to get a new 90-day visa. Some of them, those who cannot show that letter from Immigration that says their residency application is in process, are being given tourist visas of as few as five days.
Immigration is going to do what Immigration is going to do. There is no practical avenue of appeal from their decisions, so the safest approach is to play it conservatively.
[quote=”sprite”]What you are seeing may be nothing more than the globalist leveling out of extremes into one big bland enslaved planet.[/quote]
Ever the optimist, eh, sprity
I think I know that you won’t likely be fined at all if, when you return in March, you go to the bank and get the marchamo sticker and document before you drive the car.
The other thing you could try is to drive to the bank and, if stopped, show the officer your passport with the entry stamp and explain that the marchamo is paid and you’re headed to pick it up.
On the other hand, might you pay the marchamo fee online but have someone else, someone known to the bank, pick up the sticker? Or do you know the branch manager and could you get him or her to safeguard it until you return?
I’ve asked this before and no one has stepped up to respond. Maybe I’ll get lucky this time . . .
Suppose all hell breaks loose and no country’s currency is of any value whatsoever. So now those who had the foresight to invest in precious metals and who actually have physical possession of them are in the catbird seat. What next?
How, specifically, will the holders of precious metals negotiate them? Suppose, for example, that they need food, so they take a gold coin or two down to the local market, make their selections, and then what? How will they and the storeowner determine what that coin will buy? And what if the coin’s more valuable than the groceries? How do you make change?
And how will it work with the phone company? The doctor. The electrician? The gas station?
It’s entirely likely that I’m wrong, but doesn’t the value of these precious metals still have to relate somehow to the value of some currency? How else can you hope to be able to agree on what a coin or ingot will buy? And what assurance will you be able to give the store owner that the coin in question really is gold or silver?
The East-West streets in downtown Grecia certainly do change elevation. The grade increases as you travel East. The North-South streets are relatively level.
As maravilla points out, you should assume that there are elevation changes in all the Central Valley towns.
The gym at Fabrica outside Grecia sustained some damage in September’s earthquake. I don’t know if it’s back in operation or not. There are a couple of other options but I’m not familiar with them.
[quote=”maravilla”] i honestly do not know how anyone can eat at McDonalds. [/quote]
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
The most recent national census of Costa Rica revealed that there are some 15,000 expats living here other than Latin Americans (mostly Nicaraguans). That’s out of a total count of some 4.25 million.
Assuming that half the non-Latin American expats were missed, and that the actual number, including perpetual tourists, etc, is more like 30,000, that’s still a miniscule percentage of the total population — about 7/10 of one percent.
It doesn’t seem like that small part of any population could have much effect on retail prices generally. Maybe it could in a limited real estate market, like a gated subdivision, but in the larger economy it just doesn’t seem likely.
Costa Ricans commonly blame Nicaraguans for the crime that’s reported here whether that’s justified or not. I wonder if they find us expats an easy target, too.
Whenever I encounter one of those duplicate entries, crf, I delete it in my capacity as assistant subdeputy undermoderator.
I don’t dispute what you’ve said, Scott, but I have also never followed that advice, and I’ve never had the problem under discussion. Something I do do, however, is get to a certain point in my composition and then click on “Preview” to admire my work. I wonder if that helps?
Otherwise, fall back on the traditional standby and blame the user.
Everything you say, Loraine, is true, but it’s not just location-dependent. Whether you live in downtown San Jose or someplace in the boondocks, your cost of living will depend on at least two things.
The first is your available income. With a little effort, Marcia and I have always been able to spend just about whatever income we’ve had whether that’s been a lot or a little. I’ve never been able to figure it out, but the more we have the more we spend, and vice versa. I think we share this experience with a lot of folks.
The other thing is the lifestyle you impose upon yourself. If you insist on imported wine, beer and cheese, living will be expensive no matter where you’re located. The more accustomed you can become to living on the local economy, eating what and where Costa Ricans eat, driving modestly, etc the less expensive life can be, but you have to make those accommodations.
The other factor that can enter in is your actual life needs. If you are dependent upon a medication that’s not supplied by the CAJA, or if you need to hire help in your daily living, costs will mount up, but that’s equally true no matter where you live — San Jose, Arenal, or upstate New York. Some things just cost what they cost.
I think some expats come to Costa Rica thinking that it’s a welfare program for foreigners who can’t afford health care at home, who can’t live the lifestyle they’d like on their native economy, etc. Well, it ain’t. As Loraine has rightly pointed out, many food items are less expensive here, but to think that you can live a lavish lifestyle on a pittance is to delude yourself.
Hmmm . . . I’m not convinced that the dollar’s buying power [u]in Costa Rica[/u] has declined so dramatically. While it’s true that it did peak at about $1US = c576 two or three years ago, it’s been hovering right around $1US = c495 for at least eighteen months. That’s a pretty steady rate of exchange. When we arrived here in 2005, it was $1US = c475. Or maybe I’m wrong.
Our property taxes are about $325 on our three acre coffee farm with two houses which is also outside Grecia and at about 4,200 feet.
We shopped at Grecia’s feria yesterday buying imported apples, a cantalope, tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, lettuce, etc enough to fill our shopping cart and keep the two of us for a week and we spent less than $20. What’s not to like? It’s gotta cost something! (Were it not for the apples and the strawberries, it would have been more like $14.) Two dollars a day for all the produce two people can eat? That’s expensive?
I think newcomers who reflect on their expenditures here may be mixing two issues. First, there is the day-to-day cost of living. That can be almost as much or as little as you choose to spend. You can eat in one of Grecia’s excellent restaurants and spend $40 or more (much more if you include wine or drinks and dessert) or you can eat in the [i]tipico[/i] restaurants and sodas, as orcas described, and get a perfectly good meal for $5 or $6. What’s not to like? It’s gotta cost something! (And try to buy the same meals in the States.)
Second, there are the costs of getting settled and established. No doubt about it . . . Furnishing a home, getting your residency, buying a car and other “up front/one time” expenses can add up quickly, but those do not truly represent the cost of living here.
[quote=”costaricafinca”]Did you use a shipper based in Costa Rica?[/quote]
That’s the critical question, crf. Any U.S. (and probably Canadian) mover, Bekins, Wheaton, Mayflower, et al, can arrange to have a shipping container delivered to your home and then hauled to the nearest port of exit. It’s when that container arrives in Costa Rica that the fun begins.
There are perfectly capable Costa Rica-based shipping companies who can make the same arrangements in the U.S. or Canada but who also know the ins and outs of getting that container through Costa Rican Customs because they do it all the time.
There’s nothing better than local knowledge.
[quote=”maravilla”]you’re trying to argue a case and you don’t even know what Bt cotton is???? [/quote]
No, maravilla, I’m not arguing that Bt cotton isn’t toxic to Indian cows, and it’s not important to know all the details of what it is in order to see the flaws in what you’ve been asserting.
What I’m arguing is that, until actual scientific testing is done, as was not the case here, you cannot logically draw the conclusion which you are so anxious to arrive at.
In essence, what you’re asserting is that, in a miniscule sample of all Indian cows, ten of them were reported first to have eaten Bt cotton and then subsequently bloated up and died. And you conclude from the sequence of these two events alone that the first event must necessarily have caused the second. Of course, you don’t know what else they ate, you don’t know what they drank, and you don’t know what else they were exposed to.
(And, while we’re at it, ask yourself what the toxic dose of organic cotton is for Indian cows.)
It’s like you’re saying that Italian women, who have a high birth rate, become pregnant due to eating pasta. It must be true. First they eat a pasta meal and then they become pregnant. So eating pasta must be what causes pregnancy in Italian women, and we need look no farther for any other explanation.
Or maybe it’s chianti.
Or maybe it’s hot blooded Italian men.
Or maybe it’s the Catholic church’s traditional opposition to contraception.
Or maybe it’s . . .
Whatever, there must be a causal connection because the first event occurred and then the second. Yes, it makes perfect sense.
