Living in Costa Rica

Now that you invested in Costa Rican Real Estate, you probably are interested in spending more time in the country, start working or even moving here permanently.

If you are a citizen of the US, Canada, or Western Europe and you entered Costa Rica without any visa, you were given a permit to stay in the country for ninety days as a tourist. In this time you’re not allowed to work and obviously you don’t want to stay longer to avoid any immigration problems. Once you have left Costa Rica within the ninety days period, you can reenter the country again with a new ninety-day-permit, if at least seventy-two hours have passed since your departure.

However, if you’re interested in working or moving permanently, you should start the paperwork required for obtaining the status of resident as soon as possible.

There are several categories of residents in Costa Rica: investor, resident by bond with Costa Rican (person with Costa Rican children, spouse, parents or brothers), resident as a technician of a recognized company or a non-recognized company, pensionados (retirees), political refugees, religious, executives or technicians and resident as children of a current resident.

For every category of resident the requirements are different, but there are some general ones that every applicant has to have:

- Birth Certificate: Original document with a certified Official Translation to Spanish.

- Marital Status Certificate: Original document with a certified Official Translation to Spanish.

- Criminal Record: It’s a certificate issued by the Police Department of the applicant’s town of current residency. It has to have no more than three months since the day of issuance by the time you present it to the Costa Rican Consulate or Immigration Authorities and has to be accompanied by a certified Official Translation to Spanish.

These three documents and any other document required by the Authorities that is originally issued in a country other than Costa Rica, must be legalized by the Costa Rican Consulate with jurisdiction over the place of issuance of the document. Each Consulate, depending on the country and jurisdiction, has a different procedure of legalization. Your lawyer will contact the Consulate in advance to ask for its particular procedure with enough time to prevent delays.

Besides those documents, every resident application must be presented along with:

- A formal letter requesting the residency, stating the reasons and the category in which the residency is being requested.

- Special Power of Attorney to a representative in Costa Rica.

- Four passport sized pictures, facing front.

- A copy of all the passport’s pages, duly certified by Costa Rican Notary Public.

- A fax number in Costa Rica to notify you of any resolution.

- Fingerprints taken at the Costa Rican Police Archive.

All categories of residency application must be presented to the Costa Rican Consulate with jurisdiction over the place of current residence of the applicant, except when the category of residency is either bond with Costa Rican, children of a current resident or political asylee, in which cases the application has to be presented before the Immigration Authorities in San Jose.