Adventure: Costa Rican Immigration Odyssey

March 30, 2009

Trapped In Costa Rica

Shakespeare once wrote: “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

Today I would like to alter that a little, by saying: Some are born adventurous (see Adventure: Climbing Colorado’s Fourteeners), some achieve a spirit of adventure (see Adventure: Being Open to Possibilities), and some, like me, have adventure thrust upon them (keep reading!).

As some of you may be aware by now, my son and I had an extended vacation in Costa Rica, courtesy of their immigration services. What you may not know, or understand, is how this came to pass… because unless you are FROM Costa Rica, or from another “red tape” country, none of this makes any sense.

Jeff, Hunter, and I all went to Costa Rica together a few weeks back. Our plan was that Jeff would spend one week, and we would stay an additional week visiting my family. When Hunter and I showed up at the airport to head back to the U.S., they asked me if Hunter was a registered Costa Rican. I was not about to lie to immigration, in this day and age, so I said he was. 

Hunter was born in the U.S. and has ONLY a U.S. passport.  But I did register his birth with the Costa Rican government in case he ever wanted to pursue dual citizenship, or work as an adventure tour guide, or be a beach bum, or whatever. That’s it… just planning ahead.

What I had not thought through was that I had actually made him a dual citizen, passport or no passport, subject to all of the Costa Rican laws. One of the more recent laws (or at least, recently enforced) is that no Costa Rican child can leave the country without permission from the immigration office… even if BOTH parents are traveling with him. Both parents have to go to immigration for a special permission (a stamp) which specifies that the child can travel with either parent or both.

Officially, this is to prevent anyone from stealing a child, which sounds noble enough. But the fact is, those who are going to steal a child can always get the stamp anyway. Laws only really affect those who follow them. So they would not let me leave the country without the famous stamp. I changed our flights to the next day ($200 I had not planned to spend), took a taxi to my brother’s house, and started the process of getting a notarized letter from Jeff, giving me permission to bring our child home. That night I tossed and turned, dreaming of our flight home.

At 7:00 a.m. Hunter and I went to immigration to wait in line for them to open the office at 8:00. One of the reasons we had to get there so early is there is no actual system at this giant immigration compound. There are hundreds of lines all over the place, with NO signs and no official people to tell you which line you should be in. My brother dropped me off saying, “remember to ask EVERYONE around you what that line is for and if you need to be in another one first, like the bank (to pay for the stamp).”

We stood in line for the bank (about 30 minutes) only to learn that we did not, in fact, need to pay for the permission stamp. Then we moved to the permission line, asking everyone there what they were in line for, just to be sure. Every person that arrived did the same thing! EVERY person needing immigration services has to ask every other ordinary person there if they are in the right place because there is no official person to tell you. Futhermore, they change the location of each service from time to time, which is why they don’t provide signage and directions. Every applicant must re-invent the wheel every day.

Finally, we made it to the one person who rules my child’s fate until he is 18, and she said the letter was no good. The Costa Rican government does not recognize a U.S. notary. Jeff would have to go to the Consulate. Thankfully, we HAVE one in Georgia, or he would have had to to go to Miami, or Washington, or some other big city. I had to change the flight again ($200 more); this time I gave myself until Friday, realizing things probably wouldn’t happen very quickly or efficiently. In the meantime, I had to figure out how to get an original Costa Rican birth certificate from a place downtown that has 300 people in line no matter when you go.

The Costa Rican Consulate in Atlanta graciously granted my husband an appointment for Thursday, requiring him to bring, among other things, a current Costa Rican birth certificate (the original one he had in our files was more than 30 days old). So I spent most of Wednesday trying to figure out how to scan and send him the one I had obtained. What would take me about three minutes in the States took the better part of three hours that day.

Things went smoothly for Jeff at the Consulate, but they would NOT give him a copy of the permission. “We can only send it to immigration,” they said. We begged and pleaded, but they would not budge and reassured us that they do this all the time. We had nothing to fear. They even sent us a confirmation email stating they had faxed AND emailed the permission that same day.

So, I went to immigration on Thursday afternoon, proudly waving that emailed confirmation from the consulate. I waited in line, only to find that their fax machine was not working, and the woman I needed to see (the one the email was sent to) was not there. I waited another hour for her to arrive, and she said she had not received the email either. My printed confirmation from the Consulate was not sufficient, so she asked me for MY COPY of the permission (the same one the Consulate refused to give us!!!!).

At this point, I was beginning to feel a bit like Angelina Jolie’s character in the movie Changeling; only, instead of saying, “This is not my son,” I was saying, “This is MY son, and I want to take him home!” But, remembering the movie, I was careful not to get hysterical and belligerent, because I didn’t want to end up in a Costa Rican jail or psych ward. (One of my dad’s friends accidentally ended up in a Colombian jail and was stuck there for eight years!) Instead, I just tearfully thanked her and said I would be back in the morning.

When I got back to my brother’s house, I called Jeff and asked him to call the Consulate first thing the next morning, and politely point out that the very letter they would NOT give us a copy of had not reached immigration, by fax OR email. My flight was scheduled for the next day, and if I rescheduled again, the penalties would cost me more than we had paid for the three of us to go on the vacation in the first place! They needed to get the permission to immigration ASAP; we had done our part of the deal.

Friday morning Hunter and I waited in line for the place to open. This time I borrowed a cell phone that Jeff could call at regular intervals for updates, while he talked to the Consulate. When I got in to the office I learned that they still had not received the fax or the email. Finally the Consulate agreed to send Jeff a copy which he, in turn, emailed to the immigration office directly. 

The decider of our fate received Jeff’s email while I was sitting at her desk, and that was all it took. She smiled, stamped Hunter’s passport, and said, “Que le vaya bien,” the equivalent of “have a safe trip.” At this moment, the only thought in my mind was that famous line from Martin Luther King’s speech: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Hunter looked up at me and said, “Did we get the stamp this time, Mommy?” He had been crying at immigration each day when we got turned away because he thought they would never let us go home. I hugged him with all my might and said, “This time, we got it; we are going home to daddy!”

This was the adventure that was thrust upon us.  Tomorrow I will share with you 5 Lessons I Learned from My Immigration Ordeal!

Related posts:

1. Costa Rica is Paradise (And Why I Don’t Live There)
2. Adventure: Frolicking in Vermont’s Stick Season

Posted in Spirit of Adventure, acceptance, family