Today, the Costa Rican government implemented several new sanitary measures to try and control the spread of Covid-19 in the country, one of those measures has caused alarm among the foreigners that live in the country and have a legal migratory status.

The measure basically states that: As of tomorrow, March 24th all foreigners who have legal residency in the country or regular status and who choose to leave the country will automatically lose their migratory status.

To clarify where this is coming from and why the government is implementing this it is important to know that according to vice-President Epsy Campbell, during this past week Costa Rican police bodies have prevented 511 foreigners from entering the country. These people were trying to avoid the closure of borders. With the assistance of Laura Gutierrez from Immigration help Costa Rica we have published many articles on this over the past few months regarding these topics of “ border runners “ and “Perpetual Tourists”.

It is also important to consider that due to the current situation many Nicaraguans are not currently working, they were laid off or  given vacation and with Holy week right around the corner many of them try to make it back to their home country to see their families. The situation with coronavirus in Nicaragua is unclear right now and the government of the neighboring country has not taken any measures to prevent the spread of the virus, this, clearly puts Costa Rica’s entire population at risk and compromises the efforts made by the Costa Rican government to mitigate the effect of the virus.

Unfortunately, this measure affects all foreigners who hold residency or legal status in the country.

“What we are trying to accomplish is to prevent people from leaving the country, it is not convenient, we want everyone to be very clear on this: the person that has a legal migratory status even if it’s just in process, will not be able to come back to the country because he/she will lose that condition”, explained the Minister of Security, Michael Soto.