When President Luis Guillermo Solis was on the campaign trail against former candidate Johnny Araya from the majority National Liberation Party (Spanish initials: PLN), he presented a single pronouncement on the topic of immigration: He strongly believed that employers should be responsible for handling the required paperwork to assist foreign workers get the proper visa in Costa Rica.

More than a year into the administration of President Solis, nothing resembling his idea of enforcing work visas in Costa Rica has come to light; unless, however, we stop to consider the hundreds of thousands tourist visas that have been issued to Nicaraguan nationals over the last few months.

Writing for the Migration Policy Institute, Gloriana Sojo-Lara provides the following succinct summation of the situation:

Nicaraguans comprise the vast majority of immigrants, economic and otherwise, in Costa Rica, and are concentrated in specific sectors, such as construction and domestic service. Studies have consistently found they work longer hours, are paid almost half of what their Costa Rican counterparts earn doing similar work, and are insured at much lower rates than the native born.

In an interview with Esteban Mata of national newspaper La Nacion, Immigration Director Kathy Rodriguez explained that tourist visas are pretty much taking the place of work visas because the latter are too complicated, and the former prevent illegal crossings of the border checkpoints in Peñas Blancas and Tablillas.

Director Rodriguez defends the position of the government of Costa Rica in this regard, and it makes sense to a certain extent. The majority of Nicaraguan nationals who come to Costa Rica do so for the purpose of getting jobs. Some of them come here to visit and reunite with relatives, and a very small minority come here as tourists.

In Costa Rica, the problem with work and family reunion visas is that they are laden with red tape and constrained by Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Orwellian proportions. Such is not the case with tourist visas, which Director Rodriguez admits are being streamlined at the two Costa Rican Consulates in Nicaragua.

And so in Managua and Chinandega, requirements such as fingerprints, police background checks, and proof of financial solvency are being made flexible. Javier Sancho, Ambassador of Costa Rica in Nicaragua, believes that there will be 200,000 tourist visas issued this year. Ambassador Sancho admits that many of the visa applicants have been to Costa Rica before; sometimes legally, sometimes not.

Like President Solis, Director Rodriguez knows that most Nicaraguans being issued tourist visas come here to work, but at least with these streamlined entry permits the government is at least learning about these visitors/immigrants. In other words, this is better than nothing, specially since the government is collecting a $32 fee on each of these visas. In the meantime, however, nothing is being done to streamline those pesky work visas.