The governor of the Arica and Parinacota region, Jorge Diaz, addressed the opening of borders announced by the government, a measure that will take effect on May 1. The authority expressed its agreement with the Executive’s decision, pointing out that migration will once again “be selective.”
“I agree with the government’s decision to open the border crossings, because that is going to mean that migration is once again selective, as it had always been,” the governor said in conversation with The Counter at La Clave.
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“When you enter a country you have to check your background and comply with immigration requirements, when you go to any country in the world, they always ask for entry requirements and that is what we must have again and not uncontrolled migration,” he added. Diaz.
“We are very much looking forward to the opening of borders that has been announced for May 1,” he continued.
Migration in the region
The governor of Arica and Parinacota also referred to the migratory situation in the region.
“We have always been used to living with foreigners, but it has always been a regular migration, where the background of whoever enters the country is checked, but what we have seen in this time is that migration has been completely irregular, uncontrolled, enters anyone in the country,” he said.
“At the border crossing there are more than 160 irregular crossings and that has been a problem, because it is the way in which we are developing other types of processes that affect the regions, my region. Not only human trafficking, but also narcotics, weapons, minors, and it has been a trend that has made criminal types very complex,” Díaz continued.
The regional governor affirmed that “never before” in the region had people been formalized “for the crime of ‘coyotes’ or human trafficking.” He emphasized that “this has happened during this time.”
Likewise, he stated that “the border that must be guarded and protected in the region is very wide, practically equivalent to the distance between Santiago and Temuco, equivalent to the entire length of Spain. That implies that we have to protect the border, which is not from Arica, it is not from Parinacota. Is from Chile”.
Finally, he pointed out that in the last two years of the second government of Sebastian Pinera “A crisis that has never been seen before in my region was provoked and that perhaps it will be very difficult to solve from now on.”
