The President of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, ad this Wednesday that his government will take measures for migrants who arrive in his country and who, according to him, use “the political refugee regime” when in reality “they are economic migrants.”
Chaves said at a press conference that they will send a letter to the United Nations outlining the situation in the Central American country, which is home to more than 200,000 refugees, most of them Nicaraguan, according to official data.
“Today I reviewed a letter that the chancellor of the republic is going to send to the coordinator of the United Nations in Costa Rica, saying: ‘Costa Rica is a noble country, it is a country that has opened its arms, its heart and its society, its institutions, to political refugees from other countries,’ because we believe in freedom and, above all, in democracy”, Chaves stressed.
However, the president assured that “the political refugee regime, our legislation, our openness, have been used by groups that are not political refugees, but are economic migrants, and the time has come when the shared responsibility of the international community has fallen on us disproportionately.”
The international community “is not cooperating”
According to Chaves, the international community “is not collaborating with the resources” for which he said that he added that his country “could not continue paying and accepting people who are not political refugees, who are economic refugees.”
“This letter warns the international community that we are taking measures to prevent our refugee regime from being misused by people who want to emigrate to Costa Rica, stay here to work.”
Since 2018, Nicaragua has been experiencing a political crisis that has left more than 300 dead and thousands of exiles, a large part of them in Costa Rica and the United States.
According to figures from Migration and Immigration of Costa Rica, from January to August, 963 Nicaraguans have obtained resolutions approving their refugee application.
“You go as far as you can… we are not seeing the support of the International Organization for Migration, we are not seeing the support of the United Nations and the High Commissioner for Refugees,” Chaves added in this regard.
The president concluded by saying that Costa Rica is the country with the most requests for political refuge in the world, after countries like the United States, Germany and Canada, and “in relative terms, I think we are the country with the largest number of requests for refuge in the world.
“Costa Rican kindness will continue to be there, but it is up to the international community to accept, as we Ticos say, the economic part that corresponds to them,” the president concluded.
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