Costa Rica is preparing a massive regularization plan that could reach some 200,000 refugee applicants in the coming months, especially Nicaraguans, the director of Migration of the Central American nation told Reuters.
Costa Rican authorities forecast that in 2022 refugee requests will exceed 80,000, above the 2021 record of almost 60,000 requests, 90% of them corresponding to Nicaraguans who fled the country governed by leftist Daniel Ortega.
Until last year there were around 400,000 Nicaraguans residing in Costa Rica, 7.6% of the total population of the host country.
“We are preparing a plan given the inability we have to handle this exaggerated number of requests, especially from people who come from Nicaragua, which, by normal means, would take more than nine years to attend to,” Marlen Luna, director of of Migration and Vice Minister of the Interior of Costa Rica, a country of 5.2 million inhabitants.
Since the protests against the Ortega government in 2018, more than 180,000 Nicaraguans have moved to Costa Rica after denouncing threats, repression or political persecution. In 2021, refugee applications reached a maximum after disputed elections that gave Ortega his fourth consecutive term.
Luna explained that his technical team is still studying regularization formats and that the final decision must be made by President Rodrigo Chaves, but the goal is to incorporate foreigners into formality in areas such as social health and the labor market.
The Costa Rican authorities, meanwhile, have asked the international community for more help to attend to the most needy group of migrants, who in total represent 11.5% of the country’s population.
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