by Rod Hughes
According to the daily newspaper La Nación, Maureen de los Angeles Fernández of the western San Jose suburb of Pavas married a Cuban she had never met for a payment of ¢40,000 ($76.92 at today’s rate of exchange) because she needed the money and the Cuban needed the Costa Rican visa the marriage would give him.
A lawyer sought her out at her home and promised her that the marriage would be annulled in three years. He lied. Now the 25-year-old mother of three wants to marry a man she loves but is legally tied to a man she does not know and does not even have his address. He entered the country on his visa in 2004, thanks to his marriage of convenience.
Today, 118 foreigners are set to enter the country momentarily, the majority thanks of just such “marriages” and Immigration chief Mario Zamora finds himself unable to stop the process due to a Supreme Court Constitutional Chamber ruling that condemned his department and its director for denying visas. “We’re not going to expose ourselves to more sanctions,” he said grimly. The court’s ruling opens the Immigration Department and its head to civil law suits for having denied the visas.
Zamora added that five lawyers in the country specialize in marriage-for-visa arrangements, taking advantage of needy Ticos (usually women) and charging each foreigner a $10,000 fee. Zamora said the 118 included 80 Cubans, 20 Chinese and the rest Colombians and Dominicans.
But the 118 are just a tip of the iceberg, Zamora added—he must authorize the entry of another 1,700 foreigners, now an automatic process even if the marriages are not legitimate in any other way than legally.
Zamora, widely admired for his dynamic wrestling with a department deeply bogged down by bureaucracy and corruption, said he has been personally sanctioned by the court over a hundred times since he took over in May, 2006. In denying the visas, he was acting under Article 67 of the Immigration Law. “Never before had the Constitutional Chamber questioned this article,” he said.
Moreover, the immigration chief fears that the new influx will clog the already extended immigration processing at Juan Santamaría International Airport.

by Rod Hughes
“The truth is out there,” promised the old TV series, X Files.
But finding out the whole truth about the 2,000 page Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is going to be a monumental task if the pro and con propaganda does not get a little more realistic, according to an exclusive in-depth story in the English-language newspaper, The Tico Times.
And the truth is vital to voters if the Oct. 17 referendum on the trade pact comes about. (The pact is currently under review by the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber and the referendum could be derailed if the court panel finds fatal flaws in it. The court decision is expected in July.)
But so far, both sides of the controversy have given out little more information than to repeat the slogans on the placards they carried during street demonstrations, such as the sign that said, “My heart says NO. And yours?”
A Tico Times reporter, for example, asked for supporting data to several Ministry of Economy “studies” that indicated dire results if the voters rejected CAFTA, echoing the Arias Administration’s pro-CAFTA stance. It was never forthcoming and Melissa Molina, ministry spokesperson, explained lamely, “It’s not an in-depth study. It’s more of a logical study,” according to the paper.
Both sides claim, for example, that the small farmer will disappear if the pact is or isn’t approved, take your choice. But neither source offers hard data.
The newspaper’s June 15 edition published several sources of information, although most were linked to pro or con interest groups and must be weighed with care.
The Supreme Elections Tribunal, an independent governmental body which organizes and supervises all voting in the country, may hire an independent monitoring group to watch advertising. But in 1997, the Constitutional Chamber ruled that the Electoral Code’s truth in election advertising supervision was in conflict with the constitution’s freedom of expression articles, so the Tribunal’s power to ensure truthfulness is severely limited.
Editorially, The Tico Times accused both sides of “crazy exaggerations and misleading comments designed to prey on voters’ emotions.” Some political analysts interviewed by the paper suggested that, until Costa Ricans themselves demanded the facts in an outcry, the country would continue to be inundated with alarmist misinformation and “studies” that were all conclusions with little factual foundation.