Farm work and the visa wall: Costa Mar faces federal labor reckoning

The road from Puerto Azul to the interior rises gradually through mangrove margins, past the hydroelectric stations that feed the Republic's grid, and into the green plateau where Costa Mar's cacao, plantain, and citrus farms cover the land like a quilt. It takes four hours to reach the town of Río Verde, nestled in a valley where the rainfall is heaviest and the soil is richest. In early June, the rains were beginning. The farms were preparing for harvest.

But the harvest was already in doubt. At the Cooperativa Agrícola Río Verde, the largest farming collective in the interior, administrator Carmen Solís said the cooperative was short of workers—not because locals had stopped coming, but because the federal government had made it harder for them to arrive. "We used to hire seasonal workers from Tierra Verde on a simple agricultural visa," she said. "Now the federal Interior Ministry has added a residency requirement. Workers have to prove they've been in the country for ninety days before they can take a harvest job. That's longer than the harvest season."

The rule change, implemented in March 2026 by the Federal Interior Ministry under Minister Tomás Vidal, was framed as a labour-protection measure. The Ministry said it was designed to prevent exploitation by ensuring that migrant workers had time to establish local ties and understand their rights before taking agricultural employment. But in Costa Mar's interior, the effect was immediate and disruptive. Farmers who relied on hiring migrant workers during the May-to-November rainy season suddenly found that the workers they had hired in previous years could not legally return until the season was nearly over.