As we noted here last week, most of the Haitians flooding into the U.S. at Del Rio, Texas, had come, not from Haiti, but from South America, in particular Brazil and Chile.
Chile is currently hosting at least 1.4 million migrants. According to official government statistics, that includes about 182,000 Haitians, making them the third largest immigrant population, behind Venezuelans and Peruvians.
Evidence has been growing that native Chileans have had enough.
This past Saturday, September 25, a crowd–estimated by police at 5,000–of Chilean residents of the northern Chilean port city of Iquique marched in protest of illegal Venezuelan migrants in their city, some of them scuffling with migrants and setting fire to an empty migrant camp. The protestors marched about ten blocks through the city’s Old Town area, singing the Chilean anthem and shouting “No more illegal immigration!” Shouts of “¡No más migrantes!” and “Out illegal!” were heard from the crowd, while one local resident interviewed charged that Venezuela had emptied its prisons into Chile.
The protest began after authorities the day before clashed with migrants as they broke up another camp in the town square that had been declared a public health hazard.
The protest in Iquique has been condemned, of course, by the usual suspects, who were quick to label the protestors “right-wing extremists” and their protest “xenophobic.”
Eduardo Stein, Joint Special Representative of the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, called the protests “acts of intolerance.” UN migrants rights official Felipe González Morales called the protest an “inadmissible humiliation.” The Chilean Catholic organization Red Clamor said, “We cannot allow a new epidemic . . . of hatred, racism and xenophobia.” An official of the Jesuit Migrant Service, Carlos Figueroa, condemned the protest as no answer to what is a “humanitarian problem,” while in Rome on Sunday Pope Francis celebrated World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
Meanwhile, Chile’s Interior Minister Rodrigo Delgado, although expressing disagreement with the violence, said, “We will continue evictions in all public spaces that are required.” In addition, Delgado announced the resumption of deportation flights from the country, which had been temporarily halted in August after the United Nations voiced concern.
For more, see Breitbart News.