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A new idea didn’t work out so well for the new Immigration Director Johnny Marín. Yesterday, a new system was implemented where officials only take care of 500 passport requests per day. The idea is that on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 500 people will get appointments to request their passport, which will be given to them 2 days later. On Thursdays and Fridays people who request appointments via Internet will be attended to.

More than 1500 people were unaware of the new procedure and were left outside. Many had been traveling since before dawn and citizens said that at 5 am there was already a huge line outside. The situation got out of contol and bureaucrats called in the riot police to control the crowd. Weapons or tear gas was not implemented.

Marín stated that the “changes were announced 2 months ago. Immigration can’t attend more than 500 people per day. I don’t know what the obsession with this document is.”

(Note to Director of Immigration: This document is required for international travel, most countries require that people present their passport upon entry - including Costa Rica! )

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2005 at 8:05 am and is filed under Costa Rica News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.