Despite the fact that a new Migratory Law came into force, the crisis in the north due to entry through unauthorized steps continues to intensify, without lowering the number of migrants who arrive in Chile irregularly, which is viewed with concern across the board. , and where there are different diagnoses and views.
One of them is that of the Jesuit priest Felipe Berríos, who in an interview with CNN Chile was critical of the new legislation and its times, accusing the authorities of negligence in the face of a problem that has been growing over the years.
The religious, also director of the Recrea Foundation – which focuses on working with people in conditions of multidimensional vulnerability -, questioned the handling of the migration issue, with solutions that have been delayed and linking migrants with negative issues. like drugs and crime.
“What is happening is the culmination of 4 years in which a problem has been prolonged and solutions have been delayed, carrying out a rather adverse campaign against migrants, as if they brought drugs, crime, hired assassins, the crimes, the infections, etc.”, he said.
“We have been telling people for 4 years that immigration is a pure problem for Chile, that it brings poverty, that it takes away work, that it takes away care in health or education centers. If we are constantly with that official discourse, the look that we are going to have towards migration is going to be very negative and it is not going to look for solutions”, he added.
In his opinion, this is a problem that has been dragging on since before and there has been negligence on the part of the authorities to address the migration crisis and a politicization of the problem. For this reason, in his opinion, “try to depoliticize the issue, because it has been politicized in a very simplistic way.”
Regarding the decision of the current government to implement a new law, which regularizes expulsions in detail, he criticized that it does not solve the problem “when a government is finishing, by applying a law that still has many potholes, many gaps and at the last minute without having been got into trouble.”
