CRUCH and the National Migration Service sign a collaboration agreement that will strengthen internationalization, training processes and research at universities

The Director of SERMIG, Luis Eduardo Thayer, stated that “for us it is very important to be able to strengthen, through our work, the capabilities of the national university system,” beginning this first step with the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities.

For his part, the Council's executive vice president, Rector Emilio Rodríguez, expressed that "we are very pleased because we believe that the State recognizes the role of CRUCH universities as institutions that serve the country and classifies this work that we are carrying out with academics, researchers, and students as being of public interest.".

With the aim of enhancing the internationalization of the country's higher education academic offerings, promoting Chile as a destination for international students to pursue undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and postdoctoral studies, and also fostering research in all areas of knowledge, the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities (CRUCH) and the National Migration Service (SERMIG) signed a collaboration agreement this Wednesday, December 14.

The Director of Migration, Luis Eduardo Thayer, and the Executive Vice President of CRUCH, Emilio Rodríguez, agreed on the importance of this agreement between state agencies, which will allow the Service to grant residence permits to foreign students, academics, researchers and professionals who are accepted into CRUCH universities to carry out specific activities and who comply with the provisions of Law No. 21,325, on Migration and Foreigners, its regulations and the various regulatory bodies.

The Director of SERMIG, Luis Eduardo Thayer, stated that “it is very important for us to strengthen, through our work, the capabilities of the national university system, particularly those of the universities belonging to the Council of Rectors.” Through this collaborative agreement, “we are making our capabilities available to what we understand to be the national interest: the development of knowledge and the internationalization of universities, making an additional effort to strengthen this line of work with the universities.” He emphasized that “strengthening national universities by attracting highly qualified personnel—students and professors—also strengthens the country's capabilities.”.

Meanwhile, the executive vice president and rector of the University of Tarapacá stated, “We are very pleased because we believe that the State recognizes the role of CRUCH universities as institutions that serve the country and classifies this work we are carrying out with academics, researchers, and students as being in the public interest. This is very important because our country must strongly integrate itself into the knowledge society, and people are the fundamental basis for generating competitive advantages for nations.”.

1st collaboration agreement

The agreement establishes that the Service and the CRUCH will have a collaboration procedure for the immigration processing of foreigners who meet the established requirements, provided that this does not imply diverting resources to the detriment of other requirements that are made to it within the framework of its competencies.

In this regard, Emilio Rodríguez emphasized that “SERMIG is making a remarkable effort, in my opinion, to support the country's development through science and knowledge.” He explained that the agreement “means streamlining academic processes that are currently restricted by time and deadlines, and that, consequently, without this kind of support from the National Migration Service, we would face difficulties in carrying out internationalization processes and strengthening research at each of our CRUCH universities.”.

According to the Director of SERMIG, “this is an extremely challenging agreement in terms of its capabilities, given that we have a service with a very heavy historical burden. Therefore, we are going to make an additional effort to move forward with this, as we understand that universities, the public university system of Chile, are also a primary ally for the State.”.

Thayer added that “this is a first step” and that later “we will have to work with universities that are not part of CRUCH.”.

Future opportunities

In this way, the signing of the agreement opens up spaces for medium and long-term cooperation in the institutional relationship between CRUCH and SERMIG.

According to Thayer, “we see areas for collaboration to strengthen the capacity of the service and its staff” and also, “for our users, who are people with some or no education, require specialization and training. In this sense, we see important opportunities here, in this alliance we are initiating, to promote the inclusion processes of our users,” he affirmed.

Finally, the executive vice president of CRUCH expressed the Council's availability and interest—whose universities are spread from Arica to Punta Arenas—in engaging in dialogue and exploring areas for joint work with the Service, especially in the field of training, in order to offer opportunities "for the people who are part of the Service, but also for the users, which decisively points to the public interest.".