The executive director of the Citizen Peace Foundation, Daniel Johnsonwarned this Monday that to a large extent The perception that migration is linked to crime is «not justified»revealing that a large number of foreigners in Chilean prisons «They are not migrants«.
In interview with The Cooperative JournalJohnson warned that Chile and all of South America faced «a migratory wave that had an important irregular component«during the years of the pandemic, which generated fear in the population.
«The perception of citizenship of migrants when they notice that they are entering the country illegally or irregularly, has a direct relationship with fear, which obviously causes a lot of damage to families«warned the expert.
Along these lines, he assured that although there is this link between fear and damage to migration, this «is largely unjustified»giving as an example what happens in the country’s prisons.
«A good indicator may be how many foreign people we have in Chilean prisons. The truth is that There is a very important percentage of foreigners who are in Chilean prisons who are not migrants., but they are donkeyswhich is absolutely different, these are people who took a plane or something to get to Chile with eggs – which are often detected – but they wanted to return immediately to their country, they did not think they would be in Chile,» Johnson explained.
For the former director of the Metropolitan Region Serviu, this makes it clear that «The foreigner who comes (to commit a crime) is different from the one who has the will to migrate«.
MIGRANTS WHO COMMIT CRIMES
In any case, he addressed the situation of migrants who «come to commit crimes, which is very clear and proven,» explaining that these crimes «They are different from the crime customs that we had in Chile, (as well as) the relationship of migrants with the security system«.
«We Chileans are accustomed to the respect that one has for the police, with Carabineros and how they interact when they carry out a control, the confidence that one has about the fact that the police are going to act correctly as well. All of this is different depending on the experience that each person has had in the country they come from.therefore criminal situations are generated that are very serious,» warned the representative of Paz Ciudadana.
To this he added that «Relationships are generated between the police and the migrant security system that can also be much more complicated. because of the perception they previously have and that has to be worked on.
«The first job evidently in this is that migrants who commit crimes have to have quick special treatment, quickly identify who they were and if they commit a crime in Chile. Obviously one justifies expulsion processes that are quick«he pointed out.
On this last point, Johnson closed in Cooperative that the expulsion of irregular immigrants must necessarily be for «those who have committed crimes», given that resources are limited and must be focused.