By: A.M. Costa Rica (Original here)

An immigration Web site is reporting that changes have been made in a proposed bill that outlines rules for foreigners to get residency.

According to Residency in Costa Rica, the immigration director, Mario Zamora, made the changes known in an interview published in La Nación. However, questions still remain.

A.M. Costa Rica reported April 2 that the Comisión de Gobierno y Administración had approved a motion to create a Tribunal Administrativo Migratorio. Legislative sources also said other unspecified changes were made to the draft bill that soon will go to the full legislature.

Zamora was quoted as saying that legislators reached an agreement to increase residency income requirements to $1,000 per month for pensionados and $2,500 per month for rentistas. The current requirements are $600 and $1,000 per month, Residency in Costa Rica noted.

Javier Zavaleta, one of the principals in the Residency firm, said that Zamora’s comments are incomplete in that he did not specify if the $2,500 is per family or per person. Nor did the immigration director address the issue of whether current residents will have to meet the new standard when they renew. The original draft suggested that they might.

The amount required for residency has been a hot topic among expats because many individuals who are on Social Security could not meet the standards that had been proposed originally

The draft of the law would require pensionados to prove they had a guaranteed income of $2,000 a month, and rentistas would have to show a stable income from investments or rents of at least $5,000 a year, instead of the current $1,000.

Those amounts would decrease drastically the number of foreigners who could legally seek residency here.

According to the Zamora interview, the changes appear to have been made in the April 1 meeting of the committee.

Because of the Semana Santa holiday, the amended version of the law was not available this week.

In any case, the final determination will be made in the full legislature, which likely will discuss the topic soon after it reconvenes Monday. The full legislature has the power to accept, reject or modify amendments put forth by the committee.

Several lawmakers not on the Gobierno y Administración committee have expressed the desire to modify the stringent amounts specified in the original draft.