Haitian immigration in Chile

Alexandre is an eight years old boy who comes from Haiti and lives in Chile
since April of 2014. His family, worried about the Alexandres studies and
future, tried to sign up him in several public schools in Santiago. However, he
was rejected in all of them because the little boy speaks just French and
nothing of Spanish, so it would be impossible to communicate with his
teachers. Consequently, the only choice that this family has now it is to sing up
in a private school, which is impossible for them because they do not have the
necessary money. The goal of this opinion essay is to understand the opinions
of others about immigration in Chile.
To understand the real situation of Haitians, we have to consider that on
January 2010 Haiti was devastated by an earthquake which until today has this
country in precarious conditions. By the same year, there were around three
hundred Haitian people living in Chile. Nowadays, that number has increased to
five thousand people, and it is estimated that will increase even more. The
principal reasons why Haitians come to our country are the opportunities to
find a job and also to study. In addition, the main cities where Haitians live are
Quilicura, Recoleta y Estacion Central, and they usually work in low pay jobs
such as hairdressing, cooking and lifting big bags of fruits and vegetables in the
Vega Central.
I interviewed four people about their opinions the Haitian immigration in Chile.
My first question was what is your opinion about Haitian immigration in Chile?
Are you against or in favor? Three of the people interviewed replied that they
were in favor because in their country the living conditions are awful, and
because immigrants consider our country as a safe place. One of whose
answers was immigrants help and contribute to the countrys progress .This
makes me thought that it is right because historically, Chile has grown with the
immigrants help, which are the Spanish and Germans. The only interviewee
who was against replied that Chile is a country which is not socially prepared
for immigrants. First of all, because the Chilean society tends to be
discriminatory, and the other reason was because in some cases immigrants
come to Chile just to commit crimes and then come back to their country as
they had not done anything.
The next question was what is the immigrants contribution to Chile? Everyone
replied that immigrants main contribution is culture. Immigrants tend to
acquire traditions of the country where they are staying but also to contribute
to enrich our culture. For example, some of them have established restaurants
where they serve traditional Haitian food with such as sandwich Poulet or rice
with beans. Obviously, there are some cases where immigrants have acquired
so many aspects and traditions from the country where they are living, that
even they can forget their mother tongue.

Do you believe that there should be a restriction to immigrants to live in our

country? It was the question number three, and all the answers were that
every immigrants records should be analyzed before enter to any country in
order to prevent possible crimes. Even if the percentage of crimes committed
by immigrants in Chile is a 4 %, the government tries to avoid the principal
crimes which are often related to immigrants such the traffic of drugs,
prostitution and muggling. Research have demonstrated that the main reason
why immigrants commits whose crimes is because, in most of the cases, they
are undocumented therefore they cannot work, or if they find a job which
usually is low pay.
My last question was what do you think that is going to occur with our culture?
Is it going to change if we accept more immigrants? Two of my interviewees
replied that this highly possible to occur because the Chilean society had been
acquiring and adapting traditions from others countries since we have existed
as a nation. The other two replied that because it is more likely that immigrants
change their culture and adapt ours, because as the time passes they will be
use to our culture and feel comfortable with it, therefore they will finally feel as
a Chilean person.
Based on my research and interviews about Haitian immigration in Chile, I have
concluded that people, in general, support the idea of accepting immigrants in
our country, with certain conditions. Also, I agree with my interviewees who
think that the main contribution of the immigrants corresponds mainly in terms
of culture. However, we do not have to forget and ignore that they perform a
wide variety of jobs which usually are low pay, so by consequence most of
them are living in poverty. I think that our country needs to improve a lot of
aspects in terms of immigration because if immigrants choose our country as
the best opportunity to their life, we have to demonstrate that it is the right
choice.

Samantha Ramirez Fuentes.