The United States has under its guardianship 11,700 unaccompanied foreign minors with about 300 million inhabitants. In the Canary Islands, where the population of the archipelago reaches 2.2 million, they currently have 4,521 migrant children and adolescents under their umbrella. This is the comparison that the president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, used yesterday to denounce the pressure that the islands are under due to the recent crisis of the Senegalese cayucos, during which there were weeks in which a average of one hundred unaccompanied minors per day.
This new call for help to the Central Government and the Autonomous Communities was made by the Canary Islands President before the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, Elma Saiz, who took up the gauntlet after assuring that the Central Executive will to work “imminently” to carry out the necessary legislative changes so that the reception of migrant minors by the rest of the autonomous communities is not optional.
The idea is to transfer to Spanish legislation the mechanism approved for the entire European Union according to which each country is obliged to host a certain number of people. For this reason, it will be necessary to reform the Minors’ Law, as the minister guaranteed yesterday.
Spain has a dual reception system for migrants. The guardianship of adults and minors who are accompanied by their families is integrated into a comprehensive system that depends on Migrations. If during a migration crisis – be it the one the Canary Islands have recently suffered, several consecutive massive jumps over the fences in Ceuta or Melilla or an upsurge of shepherds on the Andalusian coast – the community where the migrants arrive does not have enough places reception, people are referred to other communities with available resources or are conditioned to temporary camps. However, the guardianship of foreign minors depends exclusively on the autonomous communities where the minor is. And when the regional system for minors collapses, the only possibility is to depend on the solidarity of the rest of the communities to proceed with the transfers.
According to the register of minors, coordinated by the State Attorney General’s Office, the second autonomous region that hosts the highest number of these children and adolescents is Andalusia (1,707), followed by Catalonia (1,337) and the Valencian Community (1,016) ). The following communities that have the most foreign minors under guardianship are Madrid (849), the Basque Country (667), the Balearic Islands (319), Castile and Leon (295), Melilla (276), Murcia (240), Ceuta (221). and Galicia (209). On the contrary, the autonomous regions with the fewest receptions are La Rioja (10), Cantabria (34), Extremadura (53), Asturias (64), Aragon (125), Navarra (133) and Castilla-La Mancha (143). With these data, the Canary Islands have almost 40% of the total in all of Spain in their child protection services.
The intention is, as already advanced by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska during a recent visit to Gran Canaria, that “solidarity is mandatory”. Saiz promised yesterday that he would “undoubtedly work to find consensus” in order to push forward the legislative amendment. Something that, in his assessment, requires “active and close listening” with the different autonomous communities and all the actors involved. The intention is that the change in the law will be piloted by the Ministry of Youth and Children. That is why the Sectoral Conference on migration held last week meant a jug of cold water for the Canaries, since no progress was made.
What was agreed upon, as the Minister of Migration recalled yesterday, is the constitution of several technical teams in which all the ministries in charge of migration will be present to advance the legislative change, which will have its way through Congress and senate
Clavijo reported yesterday that the cost of managing the crisis in the Canary Islands amounts to around 104 million euros, and that, regardless of the 50 already transferred by the central government, the two administrations have committed to finding more resources. We need to make the forecast for 2024, at least, until the distribution and distribution of minors is resolved, because the Canary Islands must continue to support these expenses financially”.
