I made a short one day trip to Costa Rica yesterday to look a major development project underway in Golfito. I will be making a report on this later this week, but while it is fresh in my mind, I want to take this opportunity to rant about the insanity I witnessed in Paso Canoa, the border town between Costa Rica and Panama.
As I stood in the line waiting to be processed back into Panama I saw a number of foreigners turned away by immigration officers because they did not have an airline ticket showing that they were leaving Panama in the future. It did not matter that they had airline return tickets from San Jose, Costa Rica back to their respective countries. The immigration officials demanded they have an airline ticket out of Panama or they could not come in.
Americans, Canadians, Germans and many other nationalities were being turned away as I stood in utter amazement. Their crime was wanting to visit Panama from Costa Rica to spend money in hotels and restaurants and tourism operations. The very things we pay the Ministry of tourism 10% of all our bookings to do, the ministry of immigration is stopping with vigor. Imagine the frustration of these people who came either by bus or car for 5-6 hours and then waited in long lines to get through immigration in Costa Rica, only to be told take your money back to Costa Rica because Panama does not want it. I saw justifiably angry people saying they would never again try to come to Panama, and I don't blame them. They will return to their homes praising Costa Rica and cursing Panama. No wonder we have less than 18,000 tourists in our province last year. They are actually stopping them from coming! Maybe Panama is using the velvet rope theory with tourism. Make it so difficult to get in that everyone will want to come! Yea, Panama is so great that we can put bouncers at the entrances and only let the beautiful people in just like the hot night spots in Miami.
This year the Vice President of Panama, Samuel Lewis, visited the border area and promised that they would be working to make border crossing easier for tourists to come to Panama from Costa Rica. Like most commitments made by politicians, this was just lip service. Instead of making it easier, they have made it impossible for any tourist to come into the country at a border crossing. Unless you are coming here by airline you better not come as far as they are concerned. And be sure not to warn them. Better to make them spend a day of their vacation dragging their luggage around and waiting in long lines.
Why has Panama implemented this insane stop tourism strategy? Maybe they are trying to keep foreigners who reside in Panama without a permanent visa from leaving the country for 72 hours and returning to stay another 90 days. The question we must ask is, why should they care if people stay 30, 90, 180 days or years? They are not coming to take jobs. The foreigners are spending money which employs Panamanians. Why do they care if they are legal residents or permanent tourists? They spend money just the same.
I used to ask myself, why would I want to live in a country that did not want me as a tourist? Why would anyone want to limit the time a tourist stays in the country? We need to look at countries as we do hotels. We pick the ones that fit our lifestyles and budgets. I have never seen a hotel say they limit the time a guest can stay. As long as they pay, they can stay as long as they like. Only a moron operator would put up barriers to the time a person can visit.
Utter stupidity!
