Aldo Anfossi
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, December 15, 2024, p. 18
Santiago. The Chilean government announced that it is preparing to normalize the stay of 182 thousand migrants, who entered and/or remain here irregularly, but who in 2023 responded to a government call to register voluntarily.
The State of Chile is studying carrying out a limited regularization process for people who are in an irregular immigration situation and who meet the requirements and criteria of having work or family roots in our country.announced the Undersecretary of the Interior, Luis Cordero, in Santiago during the ministerial meeting of the Cartagena +40 Process, on the protection of refugee individuals in a framework of regional cooperation.
In this way, Chile can fulfill the commitment it acquired with the people who voluntarily complied with the registration, the only way to be able to direct the process and collaborate to affirm their lives.he added.
The conservative and far-right opposition immediately spoke out against it, arguing that it could be interpreted as a sorry or amassive call so that more undocumented immigrants enter the country through unauthorized steps with the idea of regularizing their situation in the medium term.
“Is this the government’s commitment to Chile? Ignore the pain and insecurity that Chileans suffer daily due to clandestine migration (sic). While the country suffers an unprecedented wave of violence and organized crime, the government announces that its ‘solution’ is to regularize those who entered illegally (sic). They promise to expel, but they do nothing to stop the entry that has us suffocated. This is not only a mockery, it is a lack of respect towards those who demand to live in peace,” Senator Luz Ebensperger, from the Tarapacá Region, in the north of the country, published in X, through whose borders with Bolivia and Peru undocumented immigrants enter.
They are registered
The Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, came out against the criticism. “What is being thought about and has not yet been decided? That those people who took the step of registering, who approached the State and voluntarily said ‘I am here and this person I am’, if they have a job in Chile, or have family ties in this nation, we are going to evaluate the possibility of regularizing them and separate their reality from that of other people who preferred to hide,” he explained.
There was a favorable opinion from the business community.
The president of the National Agricultural Society, Antonio Walker, said: Chile is not capable of addressing the reality of agriculture with national workers, it is not a possibility. Regularizing foreigners is a fundamental condition for the sector.
With 19 million inhabitants, at the end of 2022 it was estimated that one million 600 thousand foreigners reside in the country, with Venezuelans being the largest colony (530 thousand), Peruvians (250 thousand), Colombians (190 thousand), Haitians ( 185 thousand) and Bolivians (148 thousand).
For many Chileans, migrants, mainly Venezuelans and Colombians, are synonymous with crime and organized crime. According to the police, in five years violent crimes (murders, hitmen, kidnappings, assaults) perpetrated by foreigners have increased. The active presence of the cartel has been confirmed Aragua Train and several dozen of its members are in prison.
During the second government of Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022), more than 324 thousand people were regularized, unlike previous ones, such as those of Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018), with 55 thousand, and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994- 2000), with 22 thousand.
