Santiago — IOM, the UN Migration Agency, is providing technical support to the Government of Chile to regularize the status of irregular migrants under its Extraordinary Migratory Regularization Process, which began yesterday (23/4).

The regularization process, led by the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security through its Department of Immigration and Foreign Services, will run until 22 July 2018.

This process is part of the proposal to reform the Migration Law, signed on 9 April by the President of the Republic of Chile Sebastián Piñera Echeñique, which includes a series of measures to ensure safe, orderly and regular migration. During the announcement of the proposal to reform the Migration Law, President Piñera said: “Chile has been, is and will continue to be an open and welcoming country to migrants."

Within the framework of the Regularization Process, IOM Chile is providing information to migrants about the procedures to be followed and the documents required for the regularization.

A team consisting of five people, led by IOM Chile's Coordinator of Immigration Affairs Carlos Baeza, oversaw coordination in the field. The team included Rodrigo Ubilla, Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security, Alvaro Bellolio, Head of the Immigration Department, Mijail Bonito, from the Immigration Department management team, and Norberto Girón, IOM Chief of Mission in Chile.

"IOM Chile has a key role in this process which will allow the regularization of an estimated 300,000 migrants in Chile as well facilitate their integration including full access rights, under equal conditions with the Chileans," explained Girón.

According to the information provided by the Chilean Ministry of the Interior and Public Security, as of March 2018 there are 4,000 applications for regularization per day on average, with an estimate of 1.1 million applications expected this year, which represents an increase of 21 per cent compared to 2017 (only in the Metropolitan Region). Similarly, between 2016 and 2017 the number of applications at a national level grew by 45 per cent, from 567,000 to 823,000.

In 2002, 1 per cent of the population was of foreign origin. In 2017, this figure reached almost 1 million migrants, equivalent to 5.5 per cent of the total population.

Most migrants in Chile are concentrated in two regions: Metropolitan Region, which comprises 63 per cent of the total migrant population, and the Region of Antofagasta, with 9.4 per cent.

For more information, please contact José Estay, IOM Chile, Tel. + (56) 2 2963 3710, Email: jestay@iom.int