Domestic policies
Among Bachelet's main campaign promises for the 2013 election was the introduction of free university education in Chile and the end of profit-making educational institutions, as a response to the 2011–13 Chilean student protests. The intention was that revenue from the increase in corporate tax rate by 2017 would be used to fund free education. The proposals were criticized and quickly became unpopular due to the opposition from students who felt that the proposals did not go far enough in removing profit making. Opposition parties, lower middle class voters and certain members of Bachelet's Nueva Mayoría coalition attacked the proposals as the law that would prevent individuals from earning profits on public resources would not address making improvements in quality of education.
In 2015, the Chile Constitutional Court rejected large portions of Bachelet's plan to offer free college education to half of the nation's poorest students on grounds that requiring them to attend certain schools participating in the program could be considered discrimination. However, what remained of the plan allowed Bachelet to send 200,000 students from low-income families to college free of cost.
In January 2018, the Chilean Senate passed a law guaranteeing free education which was supported by conservative opposition parties as well, allowing the poorest 60% of students to study for free and doubled state funding for public universities. The new legislation created a higher education Superintendent empowered to supervise and penalize institutions which do not provide quality of education or have for-profit operations. Alongside the free-tuition reform, Bachelet's government moved to "de-municipalize" public schooling, transferring control of public schools away from municipal governments and abolishing school co-payments.
In September 2014, the Chilean Congress passed Bachelet's tax reform proposal which aimed to increase revenue by 3% of gross domestic product. Measures included in the reform were:
increased corporate tax rate from 20% to 25% or 27%
the maximum tax bracket for personal income tax lowered to 35 percent from 40 percent starting in 2018
increased excise taxes for sweetened beverages, alcohol and tobacco
"Green" taxes including a tax on carbon emissions for thermoelectric plants bigger than 50 MW and a tax on the import of diesel vehicles with higher cylinder capacity, excluding work vehicles
measures against tax evasion
Critics blamed tax reforms for complexity driving away investment and for the slowdown of the Chilean economy during Bachelet's second period in office. However, Bachelet's supporters argue that falling copper prices were more to blame for the economic slowdown. They argue that economic forecasts of faster growth in conjunction with rising copper prices and exports from 2018 onwards (after Bachelet's term) suggest that the tax reforms did not negatively affect the economy. Others, such as MIT-trained economist and academic Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, have found that Chile's overall terms of trade under Bachelet's second term worsened only marginally compared to those of her predecessor Sebastián Piñera, due in part to a lower cost of key imports like petroleum. Consequently, he concludes that Bachelet's reforms and governance likely were instrumental in causing a period of dampened growth throughout her presidency. Indeed, by 2015 public disapproval of Bachelet's economic management had reached 72%, reflecting the broader slowdown that took hold during her second term.
After Easter Island's Rapa Nui inhabitants voted 73% in favor of establishing a conservation zone, Michelle Bachelet designated a new 720,000 square kilometer protection area in September 2017, protecting at least 142 endemic marine species, including 27 threatened with extinction. Five new national parks in the Patagonia region were created under a presidential decree, covering 10 million acres in January 2018, including 1 million acres of land contributed by conservationist Kris Tompkins. On 9 March 2018, Bachelet created nine marine reserves to protect biodiversity with her final presidential decree, increasing the area of the sea under state protection from 4.2 percent to 42.4 percent. The measure is expected to benefit marine life in approximately 1.4 million square kilometers.
When Michelle Bachelet again took office of President in March 2014, she made passing Piñera's civil union bill a priority.
The name of the bill was changed to Civil Union Pact (Pacto de Unión Civil) on 17 December, and Congress reiterated their intention to hold the final vote by January 2015. On 6 January 2015, a provision recognizing foreign marriages as civil unions was approved in the Constitutional Committee while the child adoption clause was turned down. The bill went to a final vote before both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies as it was amended. On 13 January, the full Chamber of Deputies reinserted the adoption provision. On 20 January 2015, the Chamber approved the bill on a vote of 86 to 23 with 2 abstentions. On 27 January, the Senate rejected all the Chamber's amendments, so the bill was headed to the joint committee of both houses. The committee reached the agreement in regard to the text of the bill and changed its name to Civil Union Agreement (Acuerdo de Unión Civil) the same day. The bill was passed in both houses on 28 January 2015. Several lawmakers asked the Chilean Constitutional Court to verify the bill's constitutionality, which was upheld by the court in a ruling released on 6 April 2015. The bill was signed into law by President Bachelet on 13 April 2015. It was published in the Official Gazette on 21 April 2015 and took effect on 22 October 2015.
Chile's civil union provisions enable couples to claim pension benefits and inherit property if their civil partner dies as well as more easily co-own property and make medical decisions for one another. The Government estimated at the time of the law going into effect that some two million Chilean couples cohabiting could have their unions legally recognized. In the day following the law going into effect, approximately 1,600 couples signed up to register their unions.
On 1 December 2016, the Chamber of Deputies unanimously approved (except for 6 abstentions) a bill to give couples who enter in a civil union five days off, like what married couples have. The bill was approved by the Senate in October 2017, in a unanimous 15–0 vote.
A new Ministry for Women and Gender Inequality was formed, replacing the National Women's Service in June 2016 which aimed to formulate policies against abuse of women and gender inequality. Claudia Pascual was appointed as the first ever Minister for Women and Gender Inequality.
The Chilean Congress approved Bachelet's abortion legalization bill in some circumstances in July 2017, but was subjected to challenge in the Constitutional Court.
Later, Chile's total abortion ban implemented under the Pinochet regime in 1989 was lifted in August 2017 after the Constitutional Court voted 6–4 to allow the procedure under some circumstances: in cases of pregnancy as a result of rape (up to 12 weeks), if the fetus endangers the mother's life, or if the fetus is not viable. Prior to this, Chile was one of only four nations in the Americas that had a total ban on abortions, the others being El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. The bill was formally promulgated by Bachelet in September 2017.
The Chilean Congress passed Bachelet's proposed abolishment of the binomial voting system introduced by the Augusto Pinochet regime and restoring proportional representation for election to both chambers of the Chilean Congress and requirements that 40% of candidates nominated are female in January 2015. The new system took effect from the 2017 elections, increasing the members of the Chamber of Deputies from 120 to 155 seats and the Senate from 38 seats to 43 seats in 2017 and 50 seats in 2021. As a result, the 2017 election saw the end of the dominance of Bachelet's Nueva Mayoría and conservative coalitions and increased number of new political parties represented in Congress.
Following revelations that President Bachelet's son and daughter in-law were caught in an influence-peddling scandal, she appointed a Presidential Advisory Council on Conflicts of Interest, Influence Peddling, and Corruption (known as the Engel Commission) headed by economist Eduardo Engel. Subsequently, reforms recommended by the commission were implemented which included: ability to remove politicians from office if found guilty for transparency and election spending limits violations, with disqualification for two subsequent elections; and constitutional autonomy to Chile's electoral service (SERVEL), giving it complete independence from the government to more effectively oversee electoral processes and the functioning of politics in general.
In 2016, overseas voting rights for Chilean women and men living outside the country were introduced, allowing Chilean citizens who live abroad to exercise a right to vote beginning from the 2017 elections.
Bachelet had also announced in April 2015 that a constituent process would begin that September to draft and approve a new Constitution of Chile to replace the 1980 Constitution. Five days before leaving office, Bachelet announced in a televised national address that she would present a new constitutional bill to Congress the following day. The proposal followed a series of low-turnout constitutional town halls ("cabildos") held between 23 April and 6 August 2016, not all of whose recommendations were reflected in the final text she submitted; the initiative was not taken up by her successor, Sebastián Piñera, and ultimately did not advance.
During Bachelet's second term, the number of foreign residents living in Chile rose from 410,988 in 2014 to 1,119,267 in 2017, an increase of about 232%, raising the foreign-born share of the population to 6.1%. Unlike the historically dominant immigrant groups of Peruvians, Bolivians and Argentines, newer communities from Venezuela, Haiti, and Colombia grew especially fast: visas issued to Venezuelans rose from 8,381 in 2015 to 22,921 in 2016 and 73,386 in 2017, while Haitian entry visas rose from 8,888 in 2015 to 23,750 in 2016 and 46,239 in 2017.
During this period, Haitian migrants were also targeted by trafficking schemes involving fraudulent job offers, some of which were carried through Chile via the now-defunct low-cost carrier Latin American Wings (LAW), which operated between 2015 and 2018. The airline itself filed a complaint against travel agencies in 2018 for migrant trafficking. Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz later said the government had known that agencies in Port-au-Prince were persuading Haitians to sell their homes and possessions in exchange for the promise of a Chilean work contract that never materialized, and that Chile had repeatedly raised the issue with the Haitian government without success.
In 2017 alone, some 100,000 Haitians arrived in Chile, double the figure of the previous year. Many arrived carrying yellow envelopes containing personal documents, a hotel reservation, and cash meant to "prove" sufficient means for their stay, supplied by travel agencies focused not on tourism but on facilitating emigration. Migrants later reported that, in exchange, their families in Port-au-Prince were left under threat until remittances and loans used to pay for the trip were repaid. In March 2018, days before Bachelet's second term ended, images circulated of an unmarked Boeing 767 carrying Haitian migrants with these yellow envelopes landing in Chile. Migrant trafficking proved to be a lucrative business for the companies involved, and in 2021 prosecutors formally charged five travel-agency executives with facilitating the irregular entry of foreigners under the guise of tourism between October 2017 and 2018, when in fact many intended to settle permanently in the country.
Sources closer to Bachelet said her government approached immigration with a "humanitarian, inclusive and regionally integrative" focus, consistent with her government platform. Among other pro-immigrant measures, Bachelet launched the "Chile Reconoce" program, which guaranteed Chilean nationality to the children of transient foreigners born in the country, with support from NGOs and UNICEF. On 8 September 2017, the government began building trenches at unauthorized border crossings in Colchane to prevent the passage of vehicles, though not pedestrians, outside official checkpoints.
