One of South America’s most stable countries economically and politically, Chile has become an attractive destination for migrants from the Americas and other regions. Following the country’s emergence from dictatorship in 1990, the foreign-born population increased more than four-fold, to nearly 478,000 in 2016. The pace of arrivals has quickened in recent years: Between 2010 and 2015, immigration to Chile grew at a faster rate than anywhere else in Latin America. While the immigrant share of the total population in Chile remained small in 2015, at just under 3 percent, it was surpassed in the region only by that of Argentina and Venezuela.

International migration to the predominantly European-descent Chile has also grown racially diverse, as the origins have shifted. Chile received growing numbers of Peruvians and Bolivians starting in the 1990s, and Haitians, Colombians, and Venezuelans in the 2000s and 2010s, while the share of Argentines and Europeans has fallen. This diversification in general, and the influx of tens of thousands of African-descent Haitians in particular, has made immigration more visible as an issue and has provoked public backlash, echoing calls for greater restriction in the United States and Europe. For the first time in recent history, candidates from the main political coalitions openly called for a halt in immigration or more restrictive policies ahead of the November 2017 elections.

Read the full article about Chile's migration by Cristián Doña Reveco at Migration Policy Institute.