Nicaraguans find "USA" in booming Costa Rica

By John McPhaul and Philip Barbara

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - "I'm Saved," reads a sign, in Spanish, outside a tin shack in a garbage-strewn slum in the Costa Rican capital. Then, "USA in Costa Rica."

The crude sign expresses a sentiment that is a reality for the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who have migrated to Costa Rica, which for them is a nearer and much more attainable promised land than the United States.

The man who posted the sign is away, working a construction job on Costa Rica's booming Pacific coast, where many wealthy foreigners are buying homes and land, but his family is here.

"He doesn't want to go back" to Nicaragua, said his sister Miriam. "Not enough work. There is nothing."

The man and his family are among hundreds of thousand of Nicaraguans who have arrived in Costa Rica in waves since the early 1970s, fleeing war and poverty.

Now another wave of immigration is rising on surging Costa Rican growth, and many here expect imbalances to only get worse when Costa Rica joins the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which will relax trade restrictions with the United States.

But far from rejecting immigrants, the government welcomes them and is preparing to offer work permits to its neighbors, most of whom will come from chronically impoverished Nicaragua.

"We believe we'll need about 40,000 Nicaraguan workers" right away, Mario Zamora, the Costa Rican director of immigration, said.