Visa


A large percentage of the foreigners teaching English here are working on a regular tourist visa because of the difficulty in getting working papers.

To date, immigration authorities have not paid any attention to this. As long as the teacher is not openly announcing that he/she is working, there are no problems. In the years that we have been in operation, we have never had an incident with our foreign teachers.

What we suggest is that when you come into the country, you say you are a tourist, and get the standard 3-month tourist visa. At the end of the 3 months you can either leave the country for 72 hours (by going to Nicaragua, Panama or another country) and renew your visa for another 3 months, or you can overstay it and pay a small fine when you do decide to leave the country. Sometimes this fine is not even enforced. Either way is perfectly acceptable to us.

Getting working papers for Costa Rica is very difficult unless you marry a Costa Rican citizen, invest a lot of money here, or are brought in by a very large company to fulfill a need that no Costa Rican is qualified for.

For the most updated information about visas go to the website of the Costa Rican immigration office: http://www.migracion.go.cr.