Legal background in migrants and the weak response of the authorities to detect them are some of the causes

Leer en español: Chile: ¿Por qué va en aumento la expulsión de extranjeros?

In April 2018 President Sebastián Piñera announced that the number of migrants in Chile reached 1,119,267, in which 300,000 corresponded to 6% of the population of the entire country. However, since 2012 the expulsions of foreigners increased from 864 to 1,102 in 2018, according to information from the Investigative Police (PDI).

Among the countries that have headed the expulsion list, is Peru with 444 in 2012 and Bolivia with 413 in 2013. Now, what are the main causes of this situation? According to the authorities, one of the problems is that there are few tools to detect foreigners with criminal records in the border areas since you can only look for support in the National Central Office of the International Police (Interpol) to identify them unless they commit crimes in the country.

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Recently, the Minister of the Interior, Andrés Chadwick, made effective the expulsion of 51 Colombians for their criminal records and judicial convictions. To avoid tax spending, they had to be taken to Colombia from Santiago's international airport on an Air Force aircraft from Chile.

Another problem is the reduction of the budget to the PDI to process the different cases that arise when there are migration problems since the execution of projects to acquire new technologies has been directly affected. These are necessary to apply them in the migratory control of people, the training of personnel in the related to the identification of criminal conducts, as well as the accomplishment of the expulsions of foreigners with an administrative measure.

The profile of the expelled

Among the 2,000 expulsions that are expected to be completed in December, according to Chilean government spokesperson Cecilia Perez, those who will be expelled first will be the main feature is that they are foreigners who have served sentences in Chile and were not expelled or who they find paying their crimes, they will be the first expelled.

Also, those who have not yet accepted the process of regularization that the Government of Chile undertook, will be in the spotlight, since so far only 140,000 of the 300,000 have been received, according to figures from the Undersecretariat of the Interior.

For the moment, the efforts of the Chilean government will focus on regulating those who have not resolved their immigration status, simplifying and expediting the expulsion process for foreigners who have violated the immigration law.

LatinAmerican Post | Edwin Gustavo Guerrero Nova

Translated from 'Chile: ¿Por qué va en aumento la expulsión de extranjeros?'