Migrants scramble as Chile enacts new immigration law

Migrants queued at migration centres across Chile after the implementation of a new law which could see a rise in expulsions. The new legislation stops a rule which allowed foreigners to arrive in Chile as tourists and then change their migration status to employed. On Sunday, President Sebastian Pinera said that the law aims to "put our house in order through an orderly, safe and regular migration policy, which allows legal migration and combats illegal immigration."

His Interior Secretary Rodrigo Delgado suggested that migrants who entered the nation after 18 March 2020 would have to "leave the country and ask at a foreign Chilean consulate for a visa to enter again" if they didn't want to be expelled from Chile. The new law, which came into effect on Sunday, was processed over a period of eight years and was taken to the Constitutional Court, which eliminated six articles.

(Image Credit: AP)