La Oficina de Migracion

Last Monday Angela and I spent three hours at the Immigration Office in San Jose. Visitors to Costa Rica are allowed 90 days in the country as a tourist, and afterwards they have to either leave the country for three days then return, or obtain a 30-day extension to the tourist visa but then still leave the country for three days at the end of 120 days (we plan to do this at the end of April, to Panama). Now it is necessary for us to acquire the 30-day extension, so we went to the Immigration Office to do so.

Angela and I were the only non-Latino people at the office. Of maybe 300 people, we were the only ones with different skin color. We were nervous, a bit apprehensive, wondering if we would successfully make it through the filing process, if we could understand the communications. After 2 hours of waiting in line we finally had our chance to turn in our required documents.

We presented our papers, and promptly the immigration clerk told us we had insufficient documents. Also the 5 letters we had written (one for each of us and a requirement) expressing our reasons for wanting to stay in Costa Rica contained inappropriate information so Angela and I sat at the counter and handwrote 5 new letters. Both of us sat there nervously, trying to understand what was going on and what we would need to do, when we would need to return to complete the process, how much time it would take, would we even get the extensions (if we don't get them we will be illegal in Costa Rica when we travel by car to Panama. It should be easy to cross the border into Panama, but getting back in 3 days later could be problematic since we will have left illegally. We have heard of at least one family who was deported because of this.)

Well, three days later, on Wednesday, I returned with: complete copies of each of our passports, about 100 copies worth; 5 copies of our credit card; 3 passport photos of each of us; 5 copies of our return tickets to the states; and receipts indicating that I had paid all the necessary processing fees. When I arrived at the office at about 7am Wednesday, there were about 200 Nicaraguans waiting in line. My hunch was that they were there for different reasons than I, all I needed to do was hand off my documents. So I walked to the entrance and front of the line and spoke to a security guard, who paraded me in front of everyone as he explained to an escort what my needs were. The escort then walked me in to complete the process. An hour later I was done...

And now we wait, within 10 days we should receive a fax with the approved extensions, or we wont, and we will spend our time in Panama wondering if the border patrol will be kind to us when we re-enter.