Costa Rica is the second country in the world with the most pending refugee applications to be resolved, warned the director of the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration, Marlen Luna Alfaro.
The head of Migration said on the Nuestra Voz radio program that the institution has 215,000 asylum applications pending, mainly Nicaraguan citizens, and a smaller number of Venezuelans and Colombians, the 3 nationalities that most demand this type of procedure. Only in the last month, Migration has received 2,920 new asylum applications, which continues to increase a number that has grown since 2018 and that leads to a wait of up to 8 years for applicants to know the resolution.
This high demand for new refugee applications, added to the thousands of other requests pending response, worries the country’s immigration authorities, who justify this situation based on the lack of personnel and resources. “We are overwhelmed by the fact that Costa Rica is currently reporting exponential growth in refugee applications. We have more than 215,000 applications pending (for resolution) due to lack of personnel”, Luna said on the morning show.
Remove that dam
The head officer mentioned that the country experienced a growth in the number of asylum seekers since 2018, a figure that has increased over the years at a rate that, with the budget and the current Migration and Aliens personnel, cannot be deal more expeditiously. “We are preparing a proposal to the president to remove that dam from four years ago that began to be fired in 2018 and that we see how every day grows and grows without the ability to reduce it. Costa Rica is the second country in the world with more requests pending to be resolved in that area”, said the officer.
The institutional budget is another of the Migration and Immigration stumbling blocks in streamlining these processes. “We are concerned about the low budget, it is quite a challenge, because this is a beautiful institution to work for but the fact of working with few personnel, without resources and full of needs and requests from foreigners represents many challenges”, the Vice Minister also mentioned.
Developing skills
Luna stressed that in view of this scenario, the institution has had to develop skills, since it is the first in the world with the most refugee requests from Nicaraguan citizens. The hierarch illustrated the lack of personnel in Migration with the 500 people who attend the 15 border posts in the country, 300 of whom travel to international airports to attend to the high arrival of tourists in times of high season, such as the one that is approaching , an attention that is “priority” and leads Migration to “neglect regional and attention work, to meet these high season needs”.
