Spanish government promises 100 million euros to support unaccompanied minors
Source: InfoMigrants: reliable and verified news for migrants – InfoMigrants
The Spanish government has promised 100 million euros to support unaccompanied migrant minors on the Canary Islands, after the regional government said their system was “on the brink of collapse.”
Spain’s central government has promised to transfer 100 million euros to the Canary Islands regional government by the end of October or the beginning of November, reported the Spanish regional news portal Canarias 7 on Wednesday (October 23).
The money is earmarked to help the Canary Island authorities deal with the reception of migrant minors. The announcement was made following a meeting between the Canary Islands regional president Fernando Clavijo and the Spanish Minister of Finance María Jesús Monterio, reported the regional news outlet Canarias 7.
A few weeks ago, the government had already committed 50 million euros to address migration issues. This sum had already been included in the budget. The additional 50 million should help improve the situation, Clavijo told reporters.
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Further meeting scheduled for December
A further meeting is planned for December, reports Canarias 7. At that point the real costs of caring for the migrant minors will be presented to the government and the Spanish state has promised to compensate the Canary Islands authorities for those costs. The real figure for caring for the minors amounts to 180 million euros per year, claim the Canary Island authorities.
The Spanish archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, located several hundred kilometers off the coast of West Africa, has experienced an increase in the number of arrivals to its shores this year. According to data from the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR, last updated on October 20, a total of 46,403 migrants have arrived in Spain since the beginning of the year. The majority (33,754) of these arrivals took the northwest African maritime route across the Atlantic towards the Canary Islands.
Increasing numbers of unaccompanied minors
Many of those arriving this year have been unaccompanied minors. At a press conference on Monday, a spokesperson for the Canary Islands government said that of the 2,875 people who had arrived on the archipelago so far this month, 467 are minors. Currently, the islands’ government is caring for around 5,200 minors.
Earlier this week, on October 21, a boat carrying 231 people arrived on the Canary Islands. News agencies reported it as the largest capacity boat to arrive in the islands’ history. The boat set off from Gambia, which at its shortest distance is some 1,500 kilometers away from the Canary Islands. The group included citizens of Gambia, Mali, Senegal and Guinea. One in four passengers on the boat were reported to be minors.
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Changes proposed to immigration law
The Canary Islands regional government is pushing for changes in Spain’s immigration law, so that when children arrive, they can be sent on a mandatory basis to where there is adequate provision to care for them.
Canary Islands Minister for Social Welfare, Candelaria Delgado, stressed that “no minor has been left unattended at any time.” She said in the current legislative period, the islands have gone from operating around 20 centers for unaccompanied minors to around 81, reported Canarias 7.
Even so, Delgado said that the pressures on these centers meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult to provide decent care for the minors in them. The changes in the law demanded by the Canary Islands authorities would mean that an authority can compulsorily transfer minors when the reception resources of a territory exceed 150 percent of their capacity.
However, there are ongoing debates about where the children should be sent once this situation occurs. According to Canarias 7, some have proposed that children should be sent to new territories based on their current population density, or the per capita income of each community, or the GDP of the region where they are being sent.
Balearic islands say ‘no’ to redistribution
Other Spanish island communities, like those on the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, have already spoken out about this saying that they “do not have the conditions” to welcome migrant minors from other autonomous regions, like the Canary Islands.
The President of the Balearic islands, Marga Prohens, claimed in parliament that “resources allocated to minors in care” in her region were already 850 percent over-occupied.
Both the Vox and PP parties are against this mandatory redistribution proposed by the socialist-led government and have been abstaining from voting on spending and budgetary matters because of it.
The Canary Islands authorities have also proposed that reception centers for minors should be built on the territories from where they departed. However, the human rights campaigner and founder of the organization Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders), Helena Maleno, pointed out that this idea already failed in the past. She says that the juvenile centers built in Morocco were never used for their purpose, and in the end, the buildings were deployed for other things.
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Returning minors?
According to the law, unaccompanied minors have a right to be looked after by the state and cannot be deported back to their own countries. At the beginning of 2024, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that the return of minors from Spain’s Ceuta territory, on the African continent, made in August 2021, was illegal.
Before returning a minor, an individual trial must be heard.
The Spanish central government has also ruled out the Canary Islands proposal as “unviable”, Canarias 7 reported last week. The conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) has also suggested that some of these minors be sent to other European countries, but this has also been dismissed by many in Spain.
Spain’s Minister for Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Victor Torres, told Canarias 7 during a visit to one of the Canary Islands’ smallest territories El Hierro, that he thought this solution was also unviable. He said that the new EU pact on asylum and migration was not due to come into force until 2026.
The pact provides for the possibility that migrants can be redistributed throughout the EU so that not all the pressure remains on the frontline states like Spain, Italy and Greece. Torres added that even if Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’ proposal to implement the pact a year early in 2025 was accepted, this still did not resolve the critical situation facing Spain and the Canary Islands right now in 2024. “This situation is an emergency,” concluded Torres.
With dpa and Reuters
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