International
Higher contributions and social security: the keys to Chile’s new pension reform
The Chilean Parliament gave the green light this Wednesday by a large majority to a pension reform promoted by the Government of Gabriel Boric that seeks to improve low pensions and proposes the most significant changes to the model created more than four decades ago by the dictatorship.
“It’s a tremendous achievement for Chile. It is an act of justice, of deep affection and respect for our people, which responds to what is one of the biggest debts that our country drags,” the president said in a public statement from the La Moneda palace.
Here are the keys to a reform that for some is “decaffeinated” and for others is an “achiemement” of a very polarized political class, which has not agreed for years on the great structural changes that Chile requires:
Established in 1981, in the middle of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), the Chilean system was a pioneer in the region in installing individual capitalization and forcing each formal worker to contribute 10% of his monthly salary to a personal account that he can dispose of when he retires, managed by the controversial private pension administrators (AFP).
Its defenders argue that the model has contributed to the development of the national capital market, while its detractors consider that it is an abusive and unfair system and that it only works if you have a stable job and a high income, something unthinkable for the vast majority of Chileans.
“This system has not worked because of the way pensions are calculated. People who contributed between 35 and 40 years and retired in 2023 had a replacement rate of 32.6%, this is a third of their average 10-year salary,” María José Azócar, of the Sol Foundation, told EFE.
Pensions have been leading the polls on major citizen concerns for years and citizens had lost confidence in the ability of politics to improve them.
The refoundation of the system was also one of the main demands of the 2019 protests.
None of the reforms proposed by the Governments of Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera came to the surface and only partial achievements were obtained such as the creation of a public pension for the most vulnerable in 2008 and its expansion in 2022.
The reform, which has undergone substantial modifications since it was presented by the left-wing Administration in 2022, seeks to benefit 2.8 million retirees, with increases in their pensions of between 14% and 35%.
It also increases the universal basic pension to 250,000 ($253); gradually raises the contribution to 17%, at the expense of the employer; creates social insurance; incorporates intra- and intergenerational solidarity mechanisms and tightens industry regulation to make it more competitive.
“It is a reform that changes the face of what the dictatorship did to this country,” said the Minister of Labor and Social Security, Jeannette Jara, after the approval.
The economist of the University of Chile Guillermo Larraín explained to EFE that “the most advanced countries have mixed systems, but these are more dominated by the State, while in Chile the path has been the other way around, because it is moving from a very private system to a slightly more public one.”
It was negotiated with the traditional right-wing coalition Chile Vamos and, although it is far from what the Government aspired to, it is a breath of air for Boric, since it was one of his great campaign promises, along with the tax pact that he still does not manage to move forward.
The most radical part of the coalition that makes up the Government (Communist Party and Broad Front) voted in favor, despite believing that too many concessions were made during the parliamentary debate and that they gave up eliminating the AFPs and creating a system with greater state weight.
“This reform is valid and perfects the system of the AFPs. In the long term, 6 more points will go to individual capitalization, when in the original Government project those 6 points went to social insurance so that Chile could catch up on the international stage and not continue to be an extreme case,” said Azócar.
Skepticism also reigns in the street: according to the latest Data Influye survey, 64% of those over 55 believe that the reform will not “definitely” solve the problem of pensions, compared to 33% who believe that it will only solve it “in part” and 1% who are very satisfied.
The only ones who voted against were some of them from Chile Vamos and the deputies of the different far-right parties in Parliament, opposed to any distribution system.
The leader of the far-right Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, who lost to Boric in the 2021 elections, charged against the reform in X for “taking away from workers one of their most precious assets, the right to property over their savings” and warned that he will repeal it if he manages to come to power in the elections at the end of the year.
International
Petro compares US deportations with trains sent to Nazi concentration camps
The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, compared on Wednesday the deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States with the sending of tens of thousands of people to concentration camps in Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany.
“From the episode with Trump (…) there are a series of lessons that must be learned, from them and from us. From them, I suppose, they don’t have to get handcuffs from people who want to get out of their own country,” the president said.
And he added that “There will be a political discussion there, for example, if they are not repeating the same mistake of the Germans in 1943 because they used trains and railways to carry entire wagons full of Jews, socialists and communists to the concentration camp.”
The crisis began after Petro disallowed, through a message on the social network X and not through diplomatic channels, the entry into the country of two planes sent by the United States with deported Colombians, claiming that, by coming handcuffed, they were not receiving “dignified treatment.”
In response to that refusal, Trump ordered the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Colombian products, in addition to other travel and immigration sanctions, and Petro responded with a similar measure, which caused panic throughout the country since the US is Colombia’s main trading partner and strategic ally in political and security matters.
For that reason, between yesterday and today, three flights of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC) have already arrived in Bogotá, bringing 306 Colombians, of which, according to Petro this Wednesday, 42 are minors.
“Where here is Mr. Trump going to tell 42 Colombian children that they are criminals?” the president wondered.
He added: “In the same way he told 42 children, he will tell hundreds of thousands, who are criminals, that’s what they thought in 1943.”
The president also said that in the United States “everyone who is Latin American, indigenous, black, will be treated as a criminal.”
“It’s called collectivizing crime, it was invented by (Adolf) Hitler,” he concluded.
Petro also assured on Wednesday that his country will have difficulties in its foreign relations due to global changes that, he said, lead to the emergence of “monsters”.
“In the case of Colombia’s foreign relations, we see neither more nor less that what there will be are difficulties. It is a world that enters a phase of profound changes,” said the president when taking office to his new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laura Sarabia.
Pointing out that the world is in a phase of change, Petro quoted the Italian philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci to say that while the new does not fully appear or the old is extinguished, “the monsters appear.”
“And monsters is what we are going to have, hopefully not within Colombian society but I’m afraid so are you too,” he said.
Petro assured that those who fight “for a better world” must “put on their boots” and form “an army of life, a united humanity, a united Latin America, a group that knows how to defend democracy and freedom.”
At that point he referred to Sarabia, his right hand, and who at 30 years of age is the youngest chancellor that Colombia has ever had, to indicate that she has to carry the voice of the country in that fight.
International
The White House rescums its order to freeze federal aid and loans
The White House rescinded on Wednesday the order promulgated on the eve of immediately freezing all federal subsidies and loans, a measure that had already been temporarily blocked by a judge.
“The Office of Administration and Budget (WBO) memorandum M-25-13 is terminated,” this office said in a new memorandum addressed to “heads of departments and executive agencies.”
The order to freeze aid and loans had created some chaos and confusion in its implementation, even causing the fall of the federal payment portals of the public health insurance program Medicaid.
The Government had justified the measure by arguing the need to ensure that all funds comply with the recent executive orders signed by Trump, which include restrictions on the rights of transgender people and cuts in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Trump’s pause put at risk the disbursement of billions of dollars for various programs, including student loans, and could have a negative impact on health research, food assistance and funding of support organizations for veterans and people with disabilities.
The measure could also affect aid for areas devastated by fires in California and floods in North Carolina, regions that Trump visited last week and where he had promised federal support.
Hours after publishing the order, a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked its implementation for a week.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had said on Wednesday morning that the Trump administration was “prepared to fight this battle in court.”
For his part, the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, warned that Trump “will try to find another way” to do it, but he welcomed the decision to terminate the order: “The Americans defended themselves and Donald Trump backed down,” he said.
International
Trump signs a law against migrants with minor crimes, the first since his return to power
US President Donald Trump signed his first law on Wednesday since he returned to power, a measure that allows immigration authorities to arrest migrants for robbery and other minor crimes before they have been convicted.
Trump initialed the law, the first since the beginning of his second term on January 20, in the East Room of the White House, before a hundred guests, including relatives of Laken Riley, a young woman murdered by an undocumented migrant whose death inspired the legislation.
“The United States will never forget Laken Riley,” said Trump, who said that the migrant who murdered her, from Venezuela, should have been deported.
“Instead of being expelled, as should have happened, he was released in the United States, like millions of other people, many of them very dangerous, but you see what we are doing: we are getting them out of here,” he stressed.
During his speech, Trump told the story of Laken Riley, whose name the law bears. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered in the state of Georgia in February 2024 by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, José Ibarra.
Ibarra resided irregularly in the United States and had been arrested for a minor crime of shoplifting, but was allowed to stay in the country while his immigration case was in process. The migrant found guilty of Riley’s murder at the end of 2024 and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
His death fueled the debate on immigration in the final stretch of the November 2024 elections, in which the Democratic candidate and then vice president, Kamala Harris, lost to Trump, who had promised the largest deportations in the history of the country.
The initiative, approved on January 22 by the House of Representatives, by a Republican majority, with the almost unanimous support of that bench – except for one legislator who did not vote – and the support of 46 Democratic congressmen.
The law also received the approval of the Senate, where the Republicans have a majority, with the support of 12 Democratic senators, despite the opposition of activists for the rights of immigrants, traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party.
These groups denounced the measure for considering it too radical, to the point that it could trigger massive raids against people accused of minor crimes, such as shoplifting.
Civil rights and immigrant organizations also warned that the law eliminates due process for those accused of non-violent crimes.
The arrests contemplated in the new legislation include petty thefts in supermarkets or stores and detainees will be placed in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The text will also authorize the attorneys general of the states of the country to intervene in the immigration policy decisions of the federal government. Among the new powers, they will be allowed to force the State Department to no longer grant visas to citizens of countries that do not accept deportations from the United States.
According to US media estimates, the government would need to spend more than 3 billion dollars and increase the capacity to detain migrants to more than 60,000 beds in order to enforce that law.
Trump put migration at the focus of his campaign and has pressured government agencies to impose a minimum daily arrests quota per agent and raise the total number of arrests to between 1,200 and 1,500 per day.
The US president suggested that the approval of this law is just the beginning. At a conference of Republican legislators at his hotel in Doral, near Florida, he highlighted on Monday that he shows the potential of bills that will help them take vigorous measures “against criminal foreigners and fully restore the rule of law in the country.”
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