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.