Chile changes its immigration policy and hostility towards undocumented migrants increases

SANTIAGO.- The image of 87 migrants, mainly Venezuelans, boarding a military plane from Chile to be returned to their country two weeks ago is consolidated a turning point in the immigration policy of the government of Sebastián Piñera, which generates a hostile climate towards undocumented migrants.

With a Chile that does not come out of the social crisis of 2019 and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the authorities have toughened their immigration discourse, previously united and receptive to foreign workers.

If the Chilean authorities celebrate that since the deportation in February, the clandestine income of the border with Bolivia has fallen by 92%, the drama continues with a migratory flow that generates hostility among Chileans.

Many undocumented Venezuelan citizens receive insults and they are denied assistance on the road at high altitudes and in bad weather or in towns near the border.

The search for increasingly inhospitable routes by “walkers” is due to militarized borders and restrictions that prevail in most countries in South America due to the pandemic.

“During the pandemic, public speeches welcoming the migrant population and speeches that stigmatize them coexisted,” he told the AFP Felipe Gonzáles Morales, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants United Nations Human Rights Council.

Remember that stigma can occur not only in speech “but through other actions, such as deportations carried out with fanfare and with criminalizing connotations of migrants”.

Venezuelans who walk in Chile, of all ages, but many between 18 and 26, have been the target of open rejection since the migrants in white overalls were deported.

At that time crossed to double the population of the border town of Colchane, and they were over 3,800 in a week. Residents denounced thefts from modest homes in the Chilean highlands as well as from truckers traveling to the border with Bolivia.

Among the walkers there are families, many women with babies in their arms and “the usual thugs”. They themselves recognize, accuse and regret having damaged their reputation.

“There have been many who come and enter houses like that and ask for a little arrogance,” laments Hugo González, a man from the town of Huara, a town in the Atacama desert.

Two days after the deportation of the media, Chilean Foreign Minister Andrés Allamand announced that the covid vaccines would only be intended for Chileans and legal residents, something the government itself rectified in a matter of hours.

“They desperately have to reach these places with their children in their arms, but Chile is not doing well, we have no way to take care of them. They will not get us the vaccines ”, he said. AFP Pedro Pérez, a 44-year-old mining engineer, echoes a repeating comment.

Since the early 2000s, Venezuelans have started to emigrate to Chile, but geographic isolation has forced them to travel alone by plane, therefore with documents to start a new life. So it was for most professionals.

The community is now present in all areas of work in Chile. From 2016, Venezuelan migrants started arriving by bus and the increase was explosive. Since the second half of 2020, dozens, then hundreds and in January thousands began to enter illegally, marching along the closed borders.

“The increase in restrictions in most South American states on mobility came before the pandemic and worsened during it,” says González Morales.

On February 22, 2019, President Piñera told opponents of the Venezuelan government in Cúcuta (Colombia), during an event hosted by British billionaire Richard Branson: “There can be nothing more cruel than a government that denies and close the roads. To the humanitarian aid its people so badly need ”.

A few months later, Chile announced the creation of a Democratic Responsibility Visa (VRD) for Venezuelans, valid to enter and live in the country for one year, and with which it has been sought to facilitate the regularization of migrants. Almost a year later, however, many of those who obtained VRD were refused renewal on pain of a fine or expulsion, according to testimonies confirmed by AFP.

What a difference with the attitude of the Chilean government, which has just expelled many Venezuelans, forgetting the generosity with which Democratic Venezuela welcomed Chileans fleeing Pinochet dictatorship”Wrote the Peruvian Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa in a recent column, in which he called for emulation of the Colombian government’s decision to regularize more than one million Venezuelans.

According to foreign relations data, until last December 21% of the 164,908 VRD requests made by Venezuelans since 2018“There is a double standard because the international forum in front of the world, the Authority makes a very powerful and very clear statement (Piñera in Cúcuta) and at the local level it stumbles them and prevents them from using precisely the refugee law, “he said. Macarena Rodríguez, chair of the board of directors of SJM.

Agencia AFP

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