How to Get Residency in Costa Rica

voting all right and we are live so as usual we're going to wait for some people to hop on here but in today's live we're talking with residency lawyer andres gomez and he's going to be telling us about the types of residency in costa rica so you can maybe see which ones you might qualify for and we're gonna be answering some questions some common questions that people have about applying for residency and the process but first as we're still waiting for people to get on here if you're watching the replay definitely say hi in the comments thank you for watching i hope this um this live is going to be packed with great information for you and um andres i would just like to hear about you and your experience in costa rica i really haven't had a whole lot of ticos on here so i i that's something i'd like to do and i'd like to know about your experience living in the country um and your career and how you got into it and some things that you really like about being a residency lawyer and i know you do other types of law as well so feel free to discuss that too hi sarah thank you so much for inviting me it's a pleasure to be able to give a little bit of what we know regarding immigration and uh well what can i tell you um i live in a tennis beautiful town of antennas it's a small town about half an hour from san jose 45 minutes drive it's a beautiful town family oriented and i used to live in san jose and i brought my my family here 10 years ago i opened my um boutique office here um my partner is my mother she was born in new orleans so we have a little bit of both the world and we mainly have been turning into a firm that welcomes exports here and try to help them establish themselves in the country giving them the trust customer service and all the assistance they will need to to be able to settle down and enjoy what they believe they wanted to do here in costa rica yeah absolutely i always tell people what i really like about you is your customer service which can be hard to find good customer service here in costa rica so i always love how responsive you are and how helpful um that's just one thing that i feel like makes you stand out among a lot of people if i was to move to another country i at least i would expect someone to treat me the the same way i would like to fix a client so what better word the comfort and the you know the loyalty that everything will be done according to the law which is very important and uh keep him out of trouble absolutely um well looks like we have some people on here so we can get to what we're here to talk about which i guess if you want to walk us through that some of the different types of residency that you know if someone wants to move here and they know that they want to apply um what kinds are there here in the country okay generally we have uh three types of the most common uh residency applications that we have are the investors uh rentist and pension okay there are some specific requirements for each and also some general requirements uh for example for the workforce there's a minimum um of the invested amount which is two hundred thousand dollars okay the investment can be done in setting up a business in buying an existing business and buying real estate um you can also invest in forestry and the minimum there is one hundred thousand dollars okay yeah so um just by you know investing that amount you have 75 of the chances of getting your your residency as an investor okay there's also the rentist investors application which is uh if you have a steady income uh for at least 24 months continuous of two thousand five hundred dollars then you will be able to apply uh as a renter there are several uh ways to do it you can open up a cd for sixty thousand dollars and start deducting per month to twenty five hundred or you can set up a trust in your home country and uh with a letter from your bank stating that you want a continuous income of the 2500 per month then uh that will be good enough for immigration and finally we have the pension residency application which is we have to prove that you enjoy a benefit for life of a minimum one thousand dollars okay that can be if for example you're from the plan is from the us uh with social security or military pension or private uh pensions all those count as long as the minimum is one thousand dollars okay you can also include your your children your spouse as dependent uh so the whole family can enjoy the benefits of the temporal residency okay um so i do have some questions so for the children there's an age limit is that right because i remember we talked about somebody who wanted to bring his 20 year old daughter and you would talk about some kind of something i hadn't heard of before so what would that be in that situation another client who wants to bring our grandson so like how does this work under 18 you can include them as your family benefit dependent and they can enjoy their um temporal residency and eventually they're permanent okay uh from 19 to 25 they'll give you a special permit to stay in the country which has to be is granted for periods of one year or you will have to keep on renewing them every every year okay uh that's that's the exception but underage you can include them uh with more problem involved in the application okay are there any other types of residency that you've had people file for but maybe haven't just been as common there there are special categories uh for example if you want to come here and do some type of work or you're a student regarding for special works given the high rate of unemployment right now immigration is denying most of those a very special technical position but there's no one here can do it or so hard people are allowed but basically that's it for students they're granting those permits also um as well as for their parents include they wanna come here to to study uh but those are also granted for year periods of one year who has to be renewed every year also for rewards and if you represent that type of church you can come and settle it down here in costa rica but there's several specific requirements that will need to be complied with to be able to apply okay um i just have some of my own questions so then we'll get to the other ones um so for the investor uh type of residency what's i know it's the 200 000 that someone would have to invest in like a business setting up a business or in a property could it be broken up and maybe say a hundred thousand into a business and a hundred thousand into a property or does it have to be that whole two hundred thousand in one as long as you invest the two hundred thousand dollars in costa rica and you can prove that you did the investment that is good enough for for full replication okay and then if for example um husband and wife they want to invest you cannot share the investment okay one of the applicants have to be the one to invest the 200 000 uh to be able to apply so husband invest or wife and the other will be able to be part of it as a dependent okay okay and then let's say that the partner has to be a legal husband or wife in order to be considered a dependent correct yes yeah that has to be proved with a marriage certificate from the place where you got married and that document has to be either apostle or legalized depending on the country and uh we have to work on translating it and to be able to include it in the file for immigration from your country of origin we will need the birth certificate as well as criminal background record okay for example from the u.s it has to be gotten from the fbi and uh not state police fbi and the apostle who is sent to washington dc okay okay and then do they have to be married for a certain amount of time or does as long as they're actually just legally married legally married also that story i i forgot the possibility to apply for um residency if you have a born child in the country uh or you avoid uh couple weekend uh that's also the possibilities to be applied for residency and then so if so i know i knew about the marriage obviously i know about the child because my child was born here so that's how i get my residency um so if you're married do you have to be married for a certain amount of time before you can actually apply for residency then as long as you're married the marriage is registered it's legally uh registered that's uh uh good enough to apply for the for the residency okay well great um and then for the uh the rentista residency so that would be the one that someone would have to show an income of two thousand five hundred dollars per month i do get a lot of questions about that so what if someone has employment and they do make that or more no you know employment doesn't count because it's it's an expectation especially given the situation of the pandemia we don't know if next month we'll have the job we don't know if next month next two months we'll be able to have that salary so it has to be a steady continuous that we know that we will be getting those funds for the 24 months that the example that i put was the cd in which we know the funds are there and simply with a letter from the bank saying that the income of the 2500 per month will be secured and continues or a trust in in in in your country okay so essentially if someone had the 60 000 they could put that in a trust in their country or put that in a bank only certain banks down here can they put it in any bank down here or just certain ones no there's several banks that do provide the service of giving the letter dating that they do receive for immigration issues there's other banks that don't but uh we we we can do a research to see which banks we could eventually work on and then do they have to withdraw that 2500 every month do they actually have to take it out of the bank yeah put it in a second bank account here under your name yeah i know another account at the end of the two years when you have to renew you have to set up again the cd for example uh to show the sixty thousand dollars uh and the continuous income of the twenty five hundred okay remember that after the two years uh you renew and then on the third year you can apply for the permanent residency okay that is the case also for the infant as well as for the investors so in that sense it's kind of like the money's kind of tied up for those years so they really just you don't want to take that out and spend it because you want to keep it for after those two years when you need to renew and to have it for that third year when you want to apply for your permanent residency if you can do that that's that would be perfect you just simply start stuck up the money again put it the cd and start going again with the 2500 okay so it ties up the cache a bit but you know i guess essentially it's not going anywhere yeah remember very important also when you're approved with residency it is necessary to be registered la caja okay social costa rican social security which is a mandatory regulation which will give you the entitlement to receive public uh help which is very good here in the country so uh a must okay you don't wanna uh not comply with that yeah yeah i do get some questions about that as well um well i guess i'm gonna move into some of the i'm gonna i'll move into the questions that are coming in the comments after because i i collected the questions that people had left in comments when i made a post yesterday okay so we'll go through some of those usually the process takes uh as at the moment that you follow the application immigration has 90 working days with the possibility of extending 90 additional working days to resolve the application now given the pandemia we believe this can go between 10 months and a year year a month to resolve the application 4k um at the moment that we the application is approved we move to the second stage which is the registration at la caja and once we have the approval and we have the registration at la caja then we can request immigration the the appointment to take the picture and get the dmx which is the residence card okay all right well so i guess those are the main types of residency so if anyone needs to hop off we are going to go into question and answer you can always watch the replay um if you want to talk to andres if you're planning to um apply for residency here in costa rica and you want to talk to him personally you can email me and remember you can always check my website for if you need to book a call to talk about your move if you're in the face if you're watching from my facebook group i have a youtube channel if you're not familiar with it it is filled with lots of information about moving here it would definitely be worth checking out the link is in the description and if you're watching from the youtube channel we have a facebook group where i'm a bit i can be a bit more active in there so i like that um but now we're gonna move into some of the questions that people had posted yesterday and today um and hopefully you know these will answer some questions a lot of people have and then i'll go through the comments so um we had one question they're asking is there a specific amount of time that you need to be in the country to keep your i guess your residency visa status active each year i go back and forth and never know how long i'll be here or in the states each time no as long as you're not more than six months away from the country okay that's that's the rule and if you're a tourist also uh the top term here 90 days okay so uh make sure that if you're a resident try not to leave for periods longer than six months oh oh and i do want to touch upon one other thing and let you explain that because i have explained this to a few clients recently and they're like what you know about so the driving so after they apply do you want to just explain that a little bit for people because i think that's caught some people by surprise yeah that's okay so one of the benefits of applying for residents here as you know the tourists uh enter the country they have a 90-day stay here as soon as application is filed in immigration immigration will give you a form which will allow you to stay in the country on in i'm definitely until um residence is approved the only exception is the driver's license unfortunately driver's license will not be granted here in costa rica until you're being approved resident okay so meanwhile every 90 days you're going to have to do a border run if you're planning on driving here in the country yeah so it's if you're going to be planning to drive so just make sure you know about it there's no need to leave the country but if you do and and the problem now is since the borders are closed um um in nicaraguan panama it's it makes it even more difficult yeah it's not just going to be an easy process of going down there and coming back so yeah that's something that's important you know all right so the next question is someone said concerning the pencil auto residency what does the one thousand dollar requirement have to be totally from does it need to be from a pension or we've already talked about this pension or social security uh this person says they get 975 dollars a month from social security which does not quite meet the requirement but they also get more from rental income so can they apply for panchonato or rentista residency um we we have to comply okay we have to comply with the 1 000 uh uh or comply with this with uh twenty four hundred dollars per month rent okay we cannot make a mix of both okay darn they just feel like twenty five dollars just give give them the twenty five dollars extra money that's tough i know [Music] yeah we touched on this a little bit but i guess you know we already touched on this someone said what constitutes as consistent uh income in relation to residency so we talked about having it in a bank or maybe some kind of interest dividends the trust that's what would really what if someone or if you have if you only work if you're in real estate and you receive those amounts in leases and goes to a bank account you can certify those income okay because you own the real estate and you receive the those amounts from lisa's verda so the bank will issue the letter stating that you receive every month 2500 okay so that's that's the main issue cannot be from from salaries okay and um so that person would maybe have to have a two-year lease then at their property secured okay okay good to know um someone asked i know the answer this but how long must you be in costa rica to be considered eligible to apply for residency just and have a legal entry in the country and uh file the application before the 90 days expires okay because one of the requirements is to present a full copy of your passport and hopefully the page for the country stamp is shown okay so within those nine days if you're planning on doing the residency before you fly down to puerto rico make sure that you bring all the original documents of requirements so that in that period we prepare the file and we're ready to take it to immigration okay um and then what are the what are the costs associated with residency so when someone applies some of that okay so to file the application uh there's government expense of 255 uh to follow okay once the application is approved there's gonna be a resolution granted by immigration in which you're granted the residency in that resolution immigration will establish an amount that's considered is refundable it's a like a guaranteed deposit that you're going to have to do okay it can go from different ranges from you know 400 to 200 those are the amount that you generally look uh but uh aside from that those are the the the expenses those are separate from the legal fees that uh any attorney will charge you here to to to look up the file for you okay um someone asked is it necessary for someone who will only live in costa rica about six months of the year so is it is residency necessary for somebody who only really plans to be here six months out of the year well if those six months you interrupt them every 90 days to go do a border run and you don't mind that continue living like that if you eventually plan on moving down here definitely then i would do recommend you to to to do the the residency or if you plan to to buy real estate here and come on vacation if the investment is over 200. um um um can you hear me hello hello i can hear you but can people hear my audio someone said that they lost my audio can somebody comment let me know if you can hear my audio the sound cut out on you too hear my audio okay someone said it's better we'll wait make sure okay all good we're all good i guess i was jabbering around and nobody heard anything but that's okay so we were talking about um you know if someone wanted to just be here six months it's kind of up to them but maybe if they want to purchase property then they might want to consider getting their residency so they'll have the rights to to be and be with their property and things like that if you can play with the 200 000 investment you can go ahead and apply for the residency okay yeah remember that after you've been up you're gonna have to you're gonna have to register like that's gonna be a monthly fee also that you're gonna have to be paying for good okay so uh which generally is about 120 130 dollars uh per month um but that's that's a must okay so so that's important to take into consideration mm-hmm um i have a question about that so if would that be per person so if someone applied let's say for their pension and then they had their wife as a dependent or husband as a dependent would that caja payment be per per individual then per individual and but but that person will it the person will not be registered independently it will be registered as a family benefit okay okay from the app so uh children and wife will be part of the bridge of that person in la caja as a family benefit all right okay okay they will they will also be in to the uh public health uh system uh-huh okay last question that i pulled from the comments now that you know you may not be a tax expert but someone did ask um is costa rica gonna tax people on their on their income from their residency or things like that when they get residency what kind of income is taxable for them when they're living here i'm not a tax expert but for example if you do an investment here and you for example rent uh you're gonna be subject to you know on the dividends of the rent you're gonna have to pay your income tax on those and if you sell the property and do another investment there is the possibility of paying capital gain tax uh that is a possibility but um it would be important to put a little more deep into that okay all right now i'm going to start going through some of the questions here that are coming from youtube and facebook um dara had to ask me so we covered this can income be generated by a current employer not based in costa rica so we did talk about the income needs to be investment or that that income that it will show up it can come from abroad but it has to be a continuous and uh assure a sure income okay and someone else asked can i do a loan for that amount to get the investment so maybe for that two hundred thousand dollar investment or or maybe even i don't know for that six getting sixty thousand dollars into an account could it be from a loan like an outside loan you can get the you can get a loan in your company once you have the funds you can set up the cd or you can buy the real estate and that would be good enough for the for the investment okay of course it will be your responsibility then to go ahead and pay it along but as long as the investment is done in the country and the fund from the country and we can prove that you're eligible to comply with the with the investment application okay i don't really understand this question but so maybe someone wants to clarify what they meant they said so what's the percentage if you have a child to get residency i mean you get i guess 100 you know if you're if that's your biological child and you have the child here you will get your residency correct that you're you're you you you're not even not only get your temporal you go your permanent resident if you apply for residency due to a link to a puerto rican child so so it's it's 100 it's 100 excellent yeah i like that you go you don't have to do the temporary you can just go straight to a permanent residency that's nice yeah correct let me get that are you sure you don't you um okay greg can you start residency with the rentista process but then switch to pensionada if that person retires and doesn't go back to the us you can modify the and change the status if it's before you're approved the residency and we do the change of status the whole period of time to have resolved your application starts again but we will then have to uh comply with the requirements of the type of residency you want to change to and then the the process continues but yeah it is it is possible to change and um gary is asking how much do you charge to do that legwork or does it kind of vary case by case or depending on residency for how much you charge it depends on the type of residency and the number of of individuals will be part of the application um but you know we we can discuss that yep yeah gary if you want to get directly in contact with andres you got well everybody is listening you can reach out to me directly and i will connect you i found andres to be very uh cost budget friendly and again excellent customer service really knowledgeable i mean you check you're checking on things constantly with immigration and i really keep everybody in the loop about what's going on in their process too which i think is great i think my my plus here is um we're here available 24 7. um every time i get a contact i i go ahead immediately start uh to transfer the knowledge of the applications uh we do follow up from on immigration uh every two three weeks to good reports to our clients and uh we accompany them right from the beginning they accept my services up until they receive their due next once they're approved okay so you won't be alone the whole process and um we'll be there for you all right next question as soon as the application is in can you apply for the health insurance so i guess that would be through the caja the person is asking you you have to be approved as a resident by immigration to then proceed with the with the registration at laka not before uh uh that's why right now and and not trying to get into the pandemia regulations that's why right now they're they're obligating to get an insurance here to longer the country or that so that they can be received the medical service in case of of anything and that is something that you're assisting with now correct yes we sell we i also have here in my office insurance agent and we sell insurances uh including the ones needed right now to travel to the country excellent yeah i wanted to mention that so i'm glad i didn't forget um someone asked do you have to be in costa rica to apply for residency but we do know that that's yes you do need to actually be here in the country with your visa with a valid tourist visa in order to apply you cannot let that visa expire after that 90 days because if you're illegal or you know if you're expired then you can't apply and that's what's going to cost and also and so that you don't have to worry about anything after the filing of the application generally the client will grant us a special power of attorney so that we can go to immigration and check the files and in case there's anything to be answered or make a clarification uh the client doesn't need to be here personally just in case they're outside of the country and we can continue the process going on okay okay um someone said that i was reading that kaha can be up to 450 per month for pensionaros that depends the amount of dimension i mean that that depends on the on the amount of pension that you receive and uh if there's more individuals in the family that's something that la caja does a study to determine the amount that's why i cannot give you i cannot give you a specific amount of how much laka is going to charge you or i cannot give you a specific amount of how much immigration will have make you deposit when you're approved those are amounts that i will be giving you once who actually know the information yeah um and then someone asking how long do you need to leave for so i guess that kind of spurs me a question i know what the border runs there's a time that you're supposed to leave for but it doesn't always mean that that's enforced and also let's say if someone started their residency process and they just want to leave to renew their license is there any specific amount of time that they legally need to be out of the country to do that no you can you can file for application and then you can leave the country no problem okay come right back if you need to exactly you follow the application and then you can you can leave okay once uh once the application is approved then there is a 60-day period in which we have to comply with the requirements to get the dmx okay we have to file a valid copy of the passport um start the registration at la caja make the payment that immigration says that you have to do for the deposit all that have to be complete within that period if not then we'll lose uh everything that we have gained yeah okay um someone asked for the investor type of residency they need to get a criminal record check so we did talk about that or i guess united states that needs to be an fbi background check it needs to be a federal background check from the country and that's for every type of residency correct any type of residency it's mandatory the certificate criminal background check and in case you're married uh marriage marriage certificate okay those are three mandatory for any type of residency that you may like to apply and uh remember they have to be either legalized or apostilled is there i guess that brings me a question on for the criminal background check is there a type of infraction that could actually they might actually deny someone and say sorry we can't give you residency because of this or uh you know i i have been approved a client with a dui infraction and they approved it here i there's not a list of which cr which they approve at night that depends solely on immigration but um yeah generally that's that's something we can file it and but that depends how immigration approaches it okay all right matt from youtube asked does every person in a family have to have okay okay does every person we've kind of touched on this but does every person a family have to have the well he said 2000 or is it just one person that covers the entire family but first of all i guess for the rentista it needs to be the 2500 and then i guess yeah that that one let's say he's head of household can take on dependents under the age of 18 and a spouse and i'm very important uh if there's family spouse and children they will also have to file present birth certificate and uh and the criminal background record for example for the spouse where that so that that's also necessary for all of them okay and then marissa from facebook asks can i work while in rentista status what about working virtually with clients outside of costa rica so kind of you know working from a computer or outside of costa rica yes uh well you're a temporal resident you cannot do uh work in puerto rico yeah so she wouldn't be able to be employed but could this person work from her computer from her computer and continue her work from outside no no no problem um someone asked how recent does your criminal background check need to be but we talked about needs to be very recent you know it needs to be within what six months old or what is the claim on this document immigration steps issued documents uh from the moment their issues six months they have to be filed with immigration before the six months uh period uh there's some clients tell me that they have a birth certificate it in the drawer in the closet for the last 14 years 20 years now i recommend them to get a new birth certificate and get it apostilled and we use the new one yeah i mean i was just learning that because even for the apostle they require that the birth certificate i think be no older than 12 months or something like that so yeah i had someone say oh but we have the birth certificate you know and i'm like well you need a new one you know or the merit certificate you know but uh it's a good idea to to issue a new one and uh file a new one to to immigration here okay um someone asked about this is a little off topic so i'm probably going to skip this question but they're wondering about purchasing a vehicle upon arrival but you know you can purchase a vehicle as a tourist you can purchase real estate or a vehicle with uh simply a passport with a legal entry in the country and yeah and set up a corporation and you know you can do that as a tourist okay and whether they do it through a dealership or they purchase it from an individual they need to go to a lawyer have the title transfer done and all that correct through a ordering cocktail yes yeah so i'll do another i'll do another facebook live about purchasing vehicles i have some information about that on my channel as well um i have maybe one or two videos about purchasing a car in costa rica and kind of what are the options and all those things um so if anyone wants to look at that they can alrighty we already went through that question um let's see we kind of touched on this already this person asked my wife and i retired our daughter is 18 and coming with us what what type of residency can we get her she's not a student right now is she good on our residency status until 26 i thought i read that so we did touch on that earlier but since she is over 18 she can only kind of get that special permit to be in the country wait until she's she's not going to get the residency but she'll get a special permit that she'll be able to be here but has to be renewed on a yearly basis okay okay and then one person asks if we can please clarify about the kaha if you are a resident is it 130 each adult or or 130 for each family benefit this is from generally the 130 is for one single person if they're the benefit uh family benefit there is a small percentage again i don't want to give you an amount right now because then the client will tell me the year but you told me that it was supposed to be that amount and so uh what i can tell you is that it's mandatory to register at la caja to keep your residency and that it's mandatory to keep it update and have paid it uh pay it every single month if you live if you leave the country and come back and you're not up to date that's a no no that's that's trouble so uh the important thing here is to make sure that uh caja is a requirement that we cannot uh live live aside okay absolutely so yeah if someone really needs to know if they know when they want to file for residency their lawyer is going to be the one to tell them how much that they can expect and make sure that uh you know because they say okay just i just got the residence and then i don't have to pay anything else you're going to have to pay like every single month for good okay that's good to know um and then so i know we before we actually hopped on this live we talked about immigration opening so what date is immigration opening and do you think it's it's gonna actually open today we know that immigration is opening the 18th of september okay so uh there is i haven't heard anything otherwise so i i believe it will open on the 18th um there's the i had the list here the states that will be able to come back as of september 15th is pennsylvania massachusetts and colorado okay so as of the 18th applications will be able to be filed as a tourist if you're here as a tourist uh and already expired in 90 days you're still legally here until november 18th okay so that's something good to know but yes september 18th is the day today tomorrow we don't know if it's going to be still but i'll keep you updated sarah just in case we hear anything definitely yeah so for anyone who's watching this after this live please look at the date of this video and be mindful that information could change um so that you are updated on the most current information on that someone's asking where are you located i know we kind of covered this super early in the video before a lot of people hopped on so you want to tell us about your location and and where you're at okay i'm hearing a tennis attenas is a town part of the province of alabuela it's about 45 minute drive from san jose on the way to uh the beach on the way to hako the pacific beaches um i'm here you know uh it's a beautiful town but um i'm willing to you know we can meet any part of the country that you may need me okay so um of course i will be more than glad to invite you to a cup of coffee here but if not you'll invite me wherever you are yeah and it's actually pretty convenient especially if someone's coming through the san jose airport like friday i'm going to pick up a client we're going to come to your office so that's going to be fun because it's it's on our way um and i know people in novita so yeah so you know it's a pretty good central location for both you know to have meetups so it's nice it is and actually tomorrow i'm heading to vita to sign a couple applications so you know i'm i'm i move i move around it's nice to get out right nice to get out of the office and do some drive too okay someone's asking does tricare count as in-country insurance tricare for their current insurance for the kovid for i think they're just talking about normal only the car has the insurance that qualify you know that you need to do residence for after application of for after approval of residency it's only la caja you can have your own private insurance there's no problem but mandatory you have to be registered at la caja uh uh that's a costa rican mandatory compliant yeah but people are allowed to get extra if they want you can your own private you can have your own private medici medical insurance and access to private medical system in costa rica but that does not keep you out of having to register at la caja la caja is a must yeah and for those who are interested in like learning about the other types of insurance that are available i do have a whole other live stream on that on my youtube channel as well so you can go find that um if you want to learn more about that um okay someone's asking what documents are needed to prove social security and other permanent lifelong benefits okay um if you're in from from the states for example that document is requested at uh directly at the u.s embassy okay here in costa rica so by sending an email because everything right now is online so by sending an email with your passport number plus your last four digits of your social security number the embassy will send you a letter uh stating that you received uh benefits such and such and such from social security and any other types of benefits that's the required that's the document that immigration is accepting uh right now as a pension from social security okay if you have other benefits privately then uh that institution will have to grant the pension certificate income okay here's here's a good question so my wife was born in costa rica and has dual citizenship in costa rica in the us can my daughter and i become citizens or do we have to become residents you can you could become citizens but first i would recommend you to become the the residency comply with the temporal uh with the permanent and then eventually comply with the requirements to become a citizen okay a whole new chapter that we can discuss later yeah um some of these questions i can answer quickly if i buy a business in costa rica we did talk about that you have to invest at least 200 000 us dollars um how far at least us how far in advance do the criminal background checks need to be done before applying so that needs to be not within six months of you actually putting in your residency application if they don't have uh if they don't have a validity date immigration uh has a six-month period okay so as long as we comply with that period we have we have no problem okay um someone's asking if both the wife and husband is receiving a retirement so i guess a pension um do we have to add both pensions together for kaha purposes or can we just choose one so wouldn't it apply together separately as long as one complied with the one thousand dollar uh minimum requirement as a pension that should be the one to file the residency and the other one uh filed as a dependent of of the of that of the other okay um someone's asking what is an apostle which i understand that what is that it's an authenticity of the document generally there's two two procedures uh legalization in which the for example the institution that gives you that birth certificate you will have to take it to the department of state to certify that the institution that granted the birth certificate is a legitimate public institution and that stamp that is uh established by the department of state is what is called the apostle okay that's part of a hague convention agreement several countries are part of those the us is a part of it and costa rica so we don't need a legalization process which would involve going to the costa rican congo in in the country where the documents were gotten and then taken here in costa rica to the ministry of foreign affairs but if it's only apostle just by the stamp of the department of state in the united states or in the criminal background by the apostle by the stamp in washington dc of the secretary of state it's a more uh faster procedure than the legalization process okay so i i once were on we settle with a client we can even send them examples of those apostle documents so that they know exactly what we're talking about to avoid making any mistakes yeah all right someone said they jumped in late asked who you are so you're a residency attorney and antennas so that's just going to answer that question i think they said they thought you might be a realtor so you're a residency attorney so we're hearing all this information from over here in costa rica i we help uh foreigners to settle here so you have sarah and i can assist you with um residency um i will be here to to 24 7 for you people and okay this is a good question we'll try to wrap up here soon i want to be respectful of your time and thank you again for taking this time out of your day um so amanda asks if i buy a business for 375 000 but only put down for example 175 000 while owner financing the rest would she be eligible for the the investment the residency [Music] you haven't done the 200 000 dollar investment so maybe people found the 200 000 then finance the rest that would be okay separately that would be okay but the agreement the purchase agreement has to establish the amount of the two hundred thousand dollars okay okay yeah all right um i'm gonna skip a few of these questions but i will go back and answer them in the comments myself because some of them are not really related someone says what if i have a house there but haven't started the residency process so i guess i would wonder how much does it matter if they if they purchase the house let's say years ago and it was over the two hundred thousand threshold or maybe now they have a pension if you invested the two hundred thousand dollars and we can prove that the investment was done and then we can apply for for the for the residency okay so it doesn't matter how long ago it was done maybe if they purchased five years ago as long as it was done and they can prove it and it's very proven and the transfer deed or the purchase deed establishes an investment of two hundred thousand dollars then we can file their residency all right i'm gonna skip the tax question as well i might actually know that i used to work for an expat tax company so i will hop back on and look at the comments after this too um this is a good question gary asks can you join the caja without being a resident so if someone's just here no you have to be a resident in order to pay yeah but they could go in and go to a public hospital they would just get a bill for it correct like if i mean i've gone into a public hospital here if you're here and you you're sick and you you'll receive the attention you you will not be denied the medical attention but then you will have to there's gonna be a bill yes right all right this is this is a good one too maybe if you happen to know it because i've seen somebody asking this question on facebook a few times someone saw information about relaxing the duty for import of household goods and vehicles for expats wanting to be residents do you know if that's true or if that's just kind of a rumor or we're not sure right now can you repeat it sorry well i guess there's been some information kind of floating around and i've seen this question asked there's they think somebody thinks that um costa rica is going to relax the import duty i guess the taxes for importing goods and vehicles for people who want to be resident or do we not know that we haven't heard that yet no all right no well the rest of the questions i will go through and look through some of the comments of ones that we didn't get to that may have been a little bit um that may have been a little bit off topic but i just wanted to at least focus on the ones for residency that you were able to answer remember i we touched the the detailed requirements for the types of residencies there is more general uh requirements but uh if if there's someone that needs a more in deep detail sarah please give him my email and i will be more than glad to send him all the information okay absolutely so if anyone on here does want to reach out and talk to andres you can email me my email is here in the description it's sarah s-a-r-a-h lost sarah elena.com so feel free to reach out to me if you want to get directly in uh contact with andres and you know possibly start your you know what i've noticed so for people who know that they want to file for residency when they get here now's been the time i've been putting people in contact with you because you're going to need some time to get these this fbi background check and your new birth certificate and get them apostles if you know that you want to come then you're going to want to certainly i've heard lately that the fbi and the process for is taking between four to six weeks so we're taking a long time to to issue those documents so so take into consideration when making plans uh with those uh terms yeah you're going to want to start on that now so it would be i and i say this for people who know that they want to apply for residency to come prepared to do that because we don't know what's going on with the borders we're not going to get into that right now with nicaragua and panama but you know doing those little border runs may not be an option for you so if you know you want to apply it might make your life easier if you at least come prepared at least come prepared and then you can make that you don't have to apply if you don't want to but at least come prepared if you think you might um and again people can reach out to um to me via email and then of course if you're needing help with your move all the logistics everything that there is to plan i've been super busy over here and it's been a blast i've met up with clients as over this past weekend got them settled into a vita i have somebody coming in this friday going to hako and got more people coming in in october so it's things are opening you know people are getting through um just you know as long as you're coming in with exactly what costa rica is requiring of you there's been no issue my clients have not had an issue with customs they just make sure all your decks are in a row um and yeah so feel free you can always set up a free call with me uh on my website lostairelena.com it's in the description below too and again if you want to get in touch with andres reach out to me and i will make sure to put you guys directly in contact and thank you for all this amazing information for taking your time um it's so appreciated you know it just it's so wonderful to hear all this information straight from the source you know straight from someone who knows the law and yeah thank you so much thank you so much for inviting me and um any additional questions or or comments please feel free to contact me and i'll be here awesome well i hope everybody has a great day we'll see you next week unless i have i had a it's been busy so the last two weeks i had to take i had to take two weeks off of lives um just to get myself reorganized but um but i will be on next week i don't know what we're going to talk about yet so if you guys want to hear anything specific let me know all right you have a great day have a great and i'll see you friday yeah definitely i'll have you here for you yes again bye bye

Channel: Sarah Elena

Views: 9,925

Keywords: residency in costa rica, applying for residency in costa rica, pensionado residency, rentista residency, investor residency, costa rica immigration, immigration process in costa rica, costa rica, how to get residency in costa rica, how to get citizenship in costa rica, move to costa rica, relocate to costa rica, how to move to costa rica, la sarah elena, sarah elena, costa rica residency, move to costa rica from us, move to costa rica from usa, reasons to move to costa rica

Id: khiZjOb42Mg

Length: 55min 38sec (3338 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020