Since last week another great advance in the film industry for Costa Rica has hit the movie theatres: El Camino is another film that depicts the struggle two young immigrants go through trying to find their parents who migrated to Costa Ricain search of a better life.
The lead actress herself, 14-year-old Sherling Velásquez strongly identified the plight of her character: She never got to know the mother who left her and her younger brother with their grandmothers more than a decade ago to come to Costa Rica in search of a better life for herself and her children.
Every year, hundreds of Nicaraguans trespass the Northern border of Costa Rica due to the high level of poverty they have to live with in their country: once they arrive they get low paid jobs as security guards, construction workers and house maids in the best case scenario; some end up selling goods on the streets illegally. Although in Costa Rica education is free, these immigrants cannot complete their studies since the low salary they receive is hardly enough to get by and send back to their relatives in Nicaragua, so very few of them find better jobs than those, not to mention some might be staying illegally in the country.
In Guanacaste, Costa Rica has the biggest immigration rate of Nicaraguans, being the proximity to that country. Just like in the United States immigrants not always get to taste that so called better life they searched for and end up hanging out with the wrong crowd in some cases; you could say that the issues created are very similar to the ones we North Americans are used to living with Mexican immigrants in our country: some are real honest hard workers, some may be blinded by frustration and end up being a burden to society.
It is not good to assume that all immigrants will create problems or become criminals, the way Costa Rica handles the immigration problem is actually helping those who care staying here legally granting them the same benefits a regular Costa Rica citizen has so they can succeed, of course not everyone is willing to go through all that paper work and working illegally in any country is of course a problem.
