Government grants first visas to foreigners participating in the Immigration Regularization Process
A total of 140,000 people have already registered for the extraordinary Immigration Regularization Process. The government initiated a special period to grant visas to 3,500 people by Saturday, June 30.
On Wednesday, the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, accompanied by Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick and Undersecretary Rodrigo Ubilla, granted the first visas to foreigners participating in the administration’s Immigration Regularization Process.
On April 9, the administration announced a series of initiatives to organize and regulate immigration in Chile. The process consists of two stages. The first consists of registration between April 23-July 23. The second is analysis and stamping visas.
To date 140,000 immigrants—primarily from Haiti, Venezuela and Peru—have registered to regularize their immigration status in Chile. 79,000 of them are in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago while the remainder are spread across other parts of Chile.
“The new Immigration Policy is strong and clear: open arms for those who come to integrate into our country; closed doors for criminals, who we do not want in Chile,” said the President at an event held in the sports center at the National Stadium and attended by hundreds of immigrant families receiving their visas and Chilean ID cards.
Thus the President began a special process to grant immigration documents to up to 3,500 people with the goal of encouraging others to register for the regularization process in the month leading up to the deadline,
“Chile has always been and will continue to be a country that is open and welcomes those who come seeking a new life in our country, those who want to do so honestly, those who want to work to build a new life,” said President Piñera, who was accompanied by Interior Minister Andrés Chadwick.
According to government data, there are 1.1 million immigrants in the country, representing 6.1% of Chile’s total population. The largest immigrant populations are from Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Haiti and Argentina.
The countries from which immigration has risen the most since 2014 are Haiti, Venezuela and Colombia.