Not trying to call you out or anything but it's wild to me how people always ask stuff like this. I think Chile is actually the country with the biggest Palestinian population in the world outside the Middle East. The world is globalized, has been for a while. You know Mexican-Americans? Korean-Americans? Irish-Americans? It's not such a different story. People migrate to other countries too. For example Mexico instead has a history of Lebanese, Syrian, Korean, Chinese, etc. migrant populations. There's different historical conditions behind all of these groups but it's seriously not such a rarity that individual cases should shock anyone.
There was also just a Korean guy running for president in Bolivia. Peru's most infamous recent presidents have been Polish and Japanese. Latin America's like that.
Anecdotal story. I visited Palestine and had dinner with a family that included adult sisters, probably in their 60s. Both Palestinians, but they spoke to each other in Spanish. That's their first language, because their parents fled in 48 to Columbia. They moved back after growing up at some point. I was pretty confused too, when I heard not Arabic or English, but Spanish.
Palestinians in particular though - Uruguay, Argentina and Chile have always stood in solidarity and welcomed them and used to actively try to recruit intellectuals and potential doctors. They also took in many Syrian refugees
I don't know if this is necessarily the case in Chile but often it's also the countries promoting immigration bc there's shortages in labor or a lot of unoccupied land. It was often ideological or based on weird racialism too, see prerevolutionary Mexico inviting European immigrants to whiten us, or postrevolutionary Mexico bringing people from different parts of the world to mix our genes and create the cosmic race (joke's on them though because these communities turned out endogamic a lot of the time).
Not trying to call you out or anything but it's wild to me how people always ask stuff like this. I think Chile is actually the country with the biggest Palestinian population in the world outside the Middle East. The world is globalized, has been for a while. You know Mexican-Americans? Korean-Americans? Irish-Americans? It's not such a different story. People migrate to other countries too. For example Mexico instead has a history of Lebanese, Syrian, Korean, Chinese, etc. migrant populations. There's different historical conditions behind all of these groups but it's seriously not such a rarity that individual cases should shock anyone.
There was also just a Korean guy running for president in Bolivia. Peru's most infamous recent presidents have been Polish and Japanese. Latin America's like that.
I did not know that. The only country I knew of with a Palestinian community was Canada.
Anecdotal story. I visited Palestine and had dinner with a family that included adult sisters, probably in their 60s. Both Palestinians, but they spoke to each other in Spanish. That's their first language, because their parents fled in 48 to Columbia. They moved back after growing up at some point. I was pretty confused too, when I heard not Arabic or English, but Spanish.
Palestinians in particular though - Uruguay, Argentina and Chile have always stood in solidarity and welcomed them and used to actively try to recruit intellectuals and potential doctors. They also took in many Syrian refugees
Most countries with non indigenous populations were especially rich at the time people immigrated there re contemporary immigration patterns.
It's not expected to see immigration to a place like Chile which isn't especially well off.
I don't know if this is necessarily the case in Chile but often it's also the countries promoting immigration bc there's shortages in labor or a lot of unoccupied land. It was often ideological or based on weird racialism too, see prerevolutionary Mexico inviting European immigrants to whiten us, or postrevolutionary Mexico bringing people from different parts of the world to mix our genes and create the cosmic race (joke's on them though because these communities turned out endogamic a lot of the time).