Statement on the legislative onslaught against the basic rights of migrants in Chile
On November 26, the Chamber of Deputies of the Republic of Chile approved, through Official Letter 20.059, a bill to amend the Immigration and Foreigners Law (No. 21.325, 2021), which now moves to the Senate for its potential approval. The text of this bill represents the culmination of an unprecedented criminalization of the migrant population in recent years, in which the mass media, representatives of the political world in general, and the State itself in particular have played a leading role.
The modifications approved at this stage of the legislative process represent an unprecedented setback in the recognition and guarantee of fundamental rights of the migrant population, particularly those whose status has been irregularized by the State itself, based on measures that have been cornering people who move through Latin America due to scenarios of socioeconomic, political and armed violence, pushing them into the hands of facilitators and criminal networks that profit from the desperate deployment of survival strategies.
The proposed modifications violate the rights of migrant children and adolescents to education and health; they contravene international agreements on child protection; they further precariousize the living conditions of undocumented migrants, limiting their employment opportunities, housing, and access to healthcare; and they further exacerbate the vulnerability of victims of domestic violence, exposing them to economic violence through the expulsion of the perpetrators, among other worrying implications. Furthermore, the approved changes to the law seek to institutionalize state-nationalist discrimination in access to rights by establishing priority for nationals, for example, in guaranteeing the right to education.
The progress of this legislative process in Chile is a worrying development for a region like ours, the continent with the highest levels of violence in the world, even without being at war. This is the context of the highest rates of forced displacement due to drug-related terrorism, gender-based violence, authoritarian regimes of various political stripes, extractive industries that plague our territories and communities, among other causes of inequality in its diverse forms.
It is these social processes that underlie the migrations that depart from, cross through, and arrive in our territories, a reality that is compelling evidence of the need to address these phenomena with a regional perspective, looking beyond our national (and nationalist) navels.
Therefore, as members of CLACSO Working Group on Migration and South-South BordersWe ask the senators of the Republic of Chile to prevent this setback in human rights by amending a law that is already securitizing and restrictive of migration and the rights of
who star in them.
December 4th 2024
CLACSO Working Group
Migration and South-South borders
This text expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Group and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
