Objective/Context:

Latin American democracies in the 21stcentury are torn between “protecting” state sovereignty by increasing restrictiveness in immigration legislation versus adhering to more liberal international agreements advocating human rights and mobility. Increases intraregional migration, especially from Venezuela, have pushed some South American countries to limit rights and freedoms previously included in immigration policies. Our objective is to further examine this shift to restrictiveness by empirically evaluating legislative intentions in Chile.

Methodology:

Since 2018 the Chilean government has implemented various measures aimed to achieve “orderly” and “regular” immigration, as well as proposed a law project to replace the Migration Law of 1975, adopted during the civic-military regime. We apply the Immigration Policies in Comparison (IMPIC) index using Chile’s law proposal 8970-06 and its refugee Law 20.430.

Conclusion:

The Chilean administration’s legislative intentions indicate tightening restrictions constraining human mobility, especially for labor immigration and family reunification.

Originality:

This article extends the IMPIC index from 2010 to 2019, applying it for the first time to legislative intentions of an incumbent government, to shed light on how countries, as migration states, change strategies over time.