UNIVERSIDAD DE SANTIAGO DE CHILE

FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES
DEPARTAMENTO DE LINGÜÍSTICA Y LITERATURA
Pedagogía en Inglés
Análisis e Interpretación Literaria
Prof. Andrea Campaña
Nicole Osorio Jeria

Immigrants and work in Chile

The number of immigrants in Chile has been increasing in the last years.
Nowadays, in here you can find people from different parts of the world, such as
China, Haiti, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, among others. This is the reason
why there has been a growth in terms of the negative feelings that Chileans have
against immigrants, because they feel threatened by the people that comes from
abroad, or they believe that immigrants are going to worsen the country. However, I
personally believe that they are wrong.

The most repeated comment among people is that immigrants are going to
steal Chilean’s jobs. People from here does not realize that foreigners take the jobs
that they would not take, so, finally, they are not stealing anything, they are just
taking advantage of what being left behind and not taken by anyone. In the poem we
find this verse “O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant
to be my home”, and from it we can understand that immigrants leave their countries
with the idea of finding better opportunities, of another place to call home, but then
they found themselves immerse in the reality of a discriminatory country. Having
people from different places only adds variability to Chile and the chances of being
a more open-minded place.

To sum up, the vision of many people in Chile are wrong. Immigrants are not
here to steal our job positions, they are just trying to improve their lives and the lives
of their families. To have people from different nationalities opens a new range of
possibilities and variability to Chile, and I strongly believe that we need to be more
tolerant and comprehensive with the people that choose Chile as the country in
which they want to develop themselves.