Hunger, lack of job opportunities and geopolitical conflicts are causing record migration flows in the countries that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This was the conclusion of the latest report of the Panorama of international migrationspublished this October 23 by the international organization.

“Migration to OECD countries reached an all-time high in 2022 with 6.1 million new permanent immigrants“, which represents a year-on-year increase of 26% and 14% compared to 2019,” indicates the text.

Something similar happened with the asylum requests. “The number of new applicants (2 million)” is the “the highest recorded so far” and, adds the report, “it almost doubled (+91%) between 2021 and 2022”.

Costa Rica is at the epicenter of this phenomenon. The country received more than 129,000 asylum requests in 2022.

This number is the fourth highest record among all OECD member countries (only below powers such as the United States, Germany and France, and above other countries as large as Mexico, Spain or Canada) and highest, in general, in total proportion of the country’s population (more than 25,000 per 100,000 inhabitants). ).

This behavior of asylum statistics is a trend in recent years. In them, Costa Rica “has recorded, by far, the largest number of asylum seekers in relation to its population”, according to the OECD.

The situation is not surprising considering that Costa Rica hosts a large number of people from Nicaragua, Venezuela and Colombia: three of the four main countries of origin of asylum seekers in the countries of the OECD. However, the majority of applications in 2022 came from Nicaraguans (92%). These are countries facing major political, social and migration crises. Nicaragua and Venezuela also remain under the command of authoritarian political regimes.

All these figures are part of a growing global migration trend. The historical migration of the Nicaraguan population to Costa Rica is just one more example on the planet, where other large-scale movements occur, such as the flows that exist between Eastern Europe, Africa and Western Europe, or from South America to North America, among others. others.

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Work situation

The OECD also looked at the employment situation of the migrant population in each country. This population includes all foreigners residing in each territory, not just those actively seeking asylum.

In this area, the organization explained that, Although negative gaps persist between the employment rates of local populations and migrants in Western European countries, the situation is reversed in certain countries on the American continent, including Costa Rica..

“For example, the employment gap in Chile and Costa Rica was +15.1 and +7.6 percentage points (in favor of migrants) respectively,” the report cites. “Among Latin American countries for which data is available for 2022, Chile (+1.5 percentage points) and Costa Rica (+4.8 percentage points) experienced growth in their employment rate. employment of immigrants higher than that of natives,” added the entity.

The organization’s report does not look at the type of tasks performed by foreigners in Costa Rica; However, there is data available in this regard published by other sources.

For example, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) explained in a 2022 reportthat the foreign population contributed to Costa Rica more than 9% of its economic growth between 2010 and 2019.

Furthermore, he indicated that this population represents more than 10% of the workforce in key sectors such as real estate activities (25.9%); construction (22.3%), accommodation activities (16.7%), agriculture and livestock (14.3%) and other professional activities (10.9%).

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The document also highlights that The migrant population that Costa Rica welcomes includes people of all levels of academic education.. Although four out of ten people in this group have still not completed their primary education, according to data available up to 2020, the proportion of immigrants with a university education has doubled in 10 years (from 7.2% in 2010 to 15.9% in 2010). 2020, more precisely).

The immigrant population in Costa Rica represents almost 10% of the country’s general population, according to available estimates. Of this percentage, about seven in ten people come from Nicaragua.

Government Efforts

Since taking office, President Rodrigo Chaves has issued several decrees aimed at make the process of applying for refugee status and work more complexalso for serve and ship more quickly those trying to cross from Panama to Nicaraguaen route to the United States.

For example, the government has even proposed prohibiting refugees from leaving Costa Rican territory “under any circumstances”, which was declared unconstitutional by the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice.

Another measure which was implemented by decree and which was also declared unconstitutional was the one which established that for people born in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua who sought to obtain a “temporary special migratory condition” in the country, it would be obligatory to renounce other rights, such as the search for refuge pending a resolution or appeal against the refusal.

The decrees that included these and other measures provoked several condemnations from Chamber IVin which The State was ordered to pay damages against the persons concerned, as numerous publications in the press have indicated.

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Costa Rica’s capacity to respond to refugee requests is very limited. A study carried out by FE In October last year, it determined that of the 195,843 asylum applications filed between 2017 and July 2022, only 16,035 had been resolved. From this small group, only three out of ten requests were approved.

More recently, at the end of last September, the Government also published a declaration of national emergency due to the flow of migrants crossing Costa Rican territory towards the United States.

With this document, the authorities indicated, it was intended to face with more resources the arrival of thousands of migrants who enter daily through the southern border, with Panama, on their way to North America. In this sense, Costa Rica and Panama announced the application of a system of using 200 buses to transport 2,000 or 3,000 people every day to the border area with Nicaragua.

The decision was announced in the middle of a visit by the president to the border area of ​​Panama, during which Chaves went with his counterpart from that country, Laurentino Cortizo, to observe the transit of migrants crossing the Darién jungle.

Inconvenience

President Chaves said in a press conference in November last year that his administration would take “measures to prevent our refugee regime from being wrongly exploited by people who wish to emigrate to Costa Rica to stay and work”. These declarations preceded the above-mentioned measures which were translated into decrees.

In addition, the president affirmed to the international community that the responsibility for the migration crisis fell “disproportionately” to the country and that the rest of the world “is not collaborating with the resources that this country needs to be a good citizen of the world “.

“We cannot continue to accept people who are not political refugees, but economic refugees”, he then said. “We have the highest minimum wage in all of Latin America, we have peace, we have too much crime by our standards, but well below the Latin American average. So I understand that people want to come and stay here, but we have 200,000 people who request political refuge and that gives them, with a simple phone call to the corresponding number, the right to stay here.

Recently, the diplomatic representation of Costa Rica participated in a summit organized by the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in search of solutions to the migration problem in the region. This meeting finally concluded on October 22 and brought together representatives from 11 countries, including the presidents of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel; from Honduras, Xiomara Castro; from Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and from Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.

The countries only signed a joint declaration at the end of the meeting in which they agreed to “avoid coercive measures” and respect “the human right to migrate, safeguarding the lives and dignity of migrants” , as Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia read. Barcelona. In addition, migrant destination countries were asked to abandon policies that “arbitrarily produce both pull factors and disincentives, such as the regularization of certain nationalities.”

The Chancellery did not publish further communications on the meeting, nor on the signed document. In recent days, your communication has focused on the tour of Foreign Minister Arnoldo Garnier in the countries of the European Union.

But Garnier gave an interview to Deutsche Welle, in which he discusses the immigration crisis. The leader referred to the Mexico meeting and said he believed that “not only countries of origin and transit, such as Central America, should be at the table, but also those of destination.”

However, he added, this is only one aspect of migration for Costa Rica, as it is not only a transit zone for migrants, but also a destination recognized for people coming from neighboring countries.