The president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, announced that his country is “taking measures” to prevent economic migrants from continuing to use the political refugee regime to get to work and settle in the Central American nation.
The Costa Rican president assured that they sent a communication to the representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), to “warn” her of the situation, of the lack of resources to deal with the migratory wave and that the entire burden has fallen on the Government and its institutions.
«Costa Rica is a very noble country, a country that has opened its hearts, its society, and its institutions to political refugees from other countries because we believe in freedom and above all in democracy; However, the political refugee regime and our legislation, our openness, have been used by groups that are not political refugees but are economic migrants,” President Chaves said at a press conference on Wednesday, November 16.
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“The shared responsibility of the international community has fallen disproportionately on us as a society. The international community is failing to provide the resources this country needs to be a good global citizen. If there is no where from, we cannot continue paying, continue accepting people who are not political refugees, who are economic refugees,” he added.
Costa Rica is already taking measures to prevent applications for political refuge from being “taken advantage of incorrectly by people who want to emigrate to Costa Rica” for economic reasons and stay in the country to work.
«I understand that people want to come here, but we have more than 200,000 people requesting political refuge. Unfortunately one goes as far as he can and we stopped reaching us a long time ago », he remarked.
Nicaragua is the country that sends the most migrants and refugees to the Central American country. Official data indicates that Costa Rica has received more than 200,000 refugee applications since 2018, when Nicaragua registered the worst human rights crisis in its modern history.
Most of these requests correspond to Nicaraguans who have fled the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, some for political reasons and others for the serious sociopolitical, economic and human rights crisis that Managua has been dragging for four years.
