“Hey, Laura, where’s my application approval? It’s way overdue.”
October 2025 Update
What follows is not meant to discourage anyone contemplating an application for legal residency/immigration here in Costa Rica or those awaiting approval of their submitted application for legal residency/immigration in Costa Rica.
It is meant to inform and adjust your expectations.
Obaining legal residency in Costa Rica is an absolute must for anyone intending to live here for more than six months out of the year. In some cases, less than six months. A residency card – A.K.A. DIMEX- significantly enhances your lived experience in Costa Rica.
Also, while you may be enduring a much longer wait than expected for your approval, you still have the legal right to stay in Costa Rica indefinitely (past the normal 180-day visa), or come and go at will, as well as maintain the validity of your foreign driver’s license, own property, and do banking.
Record Backlog at the DGME
(Costa Rica Immigration)
Effective September 1, 2025, the Costa Rica Immigration Department has once again begun another initiative to diminish the backlog of 38,000 pending legal residency applications. This strategy aims to process applications for various immigration categories more quickly and to support DGME officials during overtime.
The goal is to reduce the number of pending applications for legal residency by 50% by the end of 2025, thereby improving the DGME’s management. But it has already run into a snag via a successful legal challenge to a questionable aspect of their strategy.
Such has been the case with “new ideas” hatched by unqualified bureaucrats to enhance processes or alter qualifications for legal residency.
While it would be easy to remain cynical given the familiarity of this grating “tune” first heard in the late spring of 2024, I am cautiously optimistic. But the time of major change will be much farther out.
More on that below.
Historic Causes
During COVID, there was a significant uptick in residency applicants in Costa Rica. Many new retirees fled the scourge de jour (politics, social degradation, COVID lockdowns) up north and in the E.U. At the same time, the DGME (Costa Rica Immigration) had its doors closed from March 2020 until many months later. This created a logjam. After a few months, many of us providing Costa Rica legal residency services demanded action to reestablish access to the system. One reaction was the creation of a horridly dysfunctional Tramite Ya! (Procedure Now!) digital platform. That name turned out to be a contradiction of terms. It was a barely functional system designed by one of the DGME employees, who was ‘really good with computers.’
Apparently not good enough.
It was a disaster. I witnessed near-fistfights at the main offices of the DGME between staff and infuriated lawyers, incensed at how their applications had been declined under irrational and unfair judgments with no recourse. In one of my own instances, I submitted applications for a couple with identical and correct documents.
One of them was approved.
The other denied.
No reason was given for the inconsistent application of the rules. And no recourse. The second applicant had to start over, as did other applicants denied for nebulous reasons. (And were successful the second time around.) Tellingly, the DGME management had to shut down the Tramite Ya! system on at least three occasions due to dysfunction. Then later, on more occasions.
However, during COVID, the DGME eventually reopened to in-person traffic through a fraudulent social distancing appointment system, which limited the number of applicants per day. We were shackled with another needless and horrid initiative in the name of public safety. (zero effect on the spread of COVID, as overwhelmingly proven by many credible studies).
However, government workers here (and in all other countries) discovered that their workload was significantly reduced, mainly due to the spacing out of appointments and even more so by the inevitable no-shows in any appointment system.
I saw intake staff texting endlessly on their phones during any no-show time slot. Outrageously, the next in line who had arrived early were not allowed to advance until the time of their appointment. Others who arrived one minute late were dismissed, even though their documents were set to expire.
COVID tyranny at its worst.
Day after day, month after month. A massive reduction in productivity and delivered service. A black eye on Costa Rica’s welcoming reputation. All vigorously bolstered by the previous president, Carlos Alvarado, a WEF graduate and a fawning fan of Klaus Schwab. Draw your own conclusions.
The hammer was dropped down by the current President Chaves on this COVID fraud, the very day he was sworn in. The appointment system was eliminated, and access was restored to previous levels.
Zero uptick in COVID among DGME staff.
Approvals increased significantly because an internal backlog was diminished during the front-end low-traffic months of the appointment “era.” Or maybe someone cracked a whip.
Through new management, changes were made that facilitated an increase in approvals. From September 2021 to September 2022, I received 118 approvals on submitted applications. Some had been stuck in the system and finally approved after 12 to 20 months. But inexplicably, I received several in as little as 90 days and three in 60 days. However, the year-to-date approval times from 2022 to September 2023 averaged 7 to 10 months, with some exceptions. This indicates inconsistent and erratic workflows within the DGME due to mismanagement.
Then, things really began to slow down for the following reasons.
Refugee crisis
In 2023, 560,000 + people passing through from South America to the U.S. didn’t do so without some of them sticking around (in Costa Rica). Some of them leapfrogged from Panama to Nicaragua by plane. (How does a refugee afford a plane trip?) Those on foot had to pass through Costa Rica. President Chaves had to call a state of emergency to gain control over the onslaught on the Panama border. He refused to accept them walking through despite the U.N.’s strong-arming attempts at enforcement. Instead, the marchers were transported by bus from the Costa Rica/Panama border to Nicaragua in a supervised manner to continue their trek to Mexico and the U.S.
But we know there was ‘leakage’ from these groups; some lingered in Costa Rica seeking refugee status.
With the U.S./Mexico border now finally shut tight, those first-world-sponsored caravans have dispersed.
However, as of October 2025, up the street from the main DGME offices, the regular inflow of mostly Nicaraguans and Venezuelans continues steadily each week. 95% of them will be declined. As for those who do get approved, it remains unlikely that most will remain. Since there is no social safety net in Costa Rica as in the U.S., Canada, and the E.U. (where most government expenditures are on entitlement programs), most refugees will return home.
In the meantime, the Costa Rican government has to deal with everyone in a humanitarian way. This means giving them a fair shot at legal refugee status while ensuring compliance with Costa Rica’s forced commitment to the nefarious U.N., thereby holding Costa Rica accountable. That is sometimes done through U.N. observers lurking at various points of the immigration system here. I have seen and overheard these socialist referees in the DGME urging so-called refugees to “demand their rights.”
Sorting out the frauds from genuine refugees severely bogs down the system and uses precious resources.
It is easy to see that all roads lead to operators in the U.S. and the E.U. (WEF), including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which trades places annually with Big Pharma for the top D.C. lobbying spot. (In pursuit of cheap labor to bolster U.S. competitiveness against competing countries like China, Vietnam, India, and Brazil). But I will restrain myself from getting too far into the subject. Most readers can fill in the blanks reasonably quickly by now.
How does all of this affect your residency application?
Simple.
Refugee applicants draw from the same pool of limited resources that process legal Costa Rica residency files. And that system was already stretched thin after COVID, when immigration offices faced major budget shortfalls due to a steep drop in tax revenues.
In short, a system that was barely keeping up before the pandemic is now expected to handle even more cases with fewer resources. The result? Slower processing times and more frustration for everyone involved.
DGME Management and morale issues
Another recent element that created the perfect storm is sudden staff resignations in protest against the current DGME management. I have noticed long-time middle management individuals I know well now staffing the front-line intake counters to cover for the previous intake staff who’ve quit.
Don’t panic just yet.
This management crisis is cyclical. It occurs every few years and gets fixed. This one will be more difficult and time-consuming, mainly due to the strain of applicants for refugee status and budget issues caused by COVID, from which we are still recovering. An influx of World Bank cash to help the flow of ‘refugees’ only went so far.
I remain optimistic that this crisis will diminish depending on how U.S. politics impact Central American countries. While complex to analyze, there are clear indications that positive change is happening. El Salvador is a prime example of a proactive country, in addition to Costa Rica.
Here in Costa Rica, we can expect a seismic change following next spring’s election. Including a vast improvement in government services currently hobbled by powerful unions and widespread nepotism held in place by a problematic and obstructive Costa Rica Congress. Their days are numbered.
Does any of this sound familiar?
In the meantime, I continue to employ expediting techniques for the most backlogged applications to the DGME. Also, I remind all readers that within the DGME, there are some great staff members who are truly doing their best under these difficult circumstances.
We are supporting each other.
I encourage all readers affected by this situation to hang in there and stay focused on the enduring beauty of our Costa Rica, which you came here to experience in the first place.
