The Government is looking for alternatives to the PP’s blockade of the reform of the immigration law to establish a mandatory distribution between autonomous communities in the reception of migrant minors. In full talks with Junts for the delegation of immigration management powers to the Generalitat, the Executive proposes issuing via decree an exceptional solution to the emergency situation faced mainly by the Canary Islands and Ceuta, and to do so it needs the votes of the seven deputies. of Carles Puigdemont in Congress, with whom he is also already negotiating about this distribution.
2024 has closed as the year in which more migrants officially arrived in the Canary Islands since records have been recorded. The balance of the Ministry of the Interior reflects that the figure far exceeds the barrier of 40,000, many of them unaccompanied minors who arrive in Spain in a situation of helplessness. And the situation has only worsened since the beginning of Christmas due to the inability of the institutions to provide an urgent response due to the lack of a political agreement.
Since in the summer the majority of Congress overturned the reform of article 35 of the immigration law to establish a system of distribution of reception between the autonomous communities with the votes of PP, Junts and Vox, among others, migrant minors have become in one more ammunition of the political combat between the Government and the opposition. Sponsored by the Canary Islands president, Fernando Clavijo, the PSOE and the PP have carried out negotiations in recent months with the minister Ángel Víctor Torres and the popular spokesperson, Miguel Tellado, as interlocutors. But these conversations have not produced any fruit due to the systematic blocking by Feijóo of any type of agreed solution.
In the Government they maintain that the pressure from Vox, on whom the PP depends to approve the budgets of a multitude of autonomous communities and city councils in which governments need the support of the extreme right, dynamites any type of approach. And that weighs even more than the fact that the popular ones are also part of the Canary Islands executive that must respond to the emergency.
“The minors are the responsibility of the autonomous communities and are overcrowded in the Canary Islands and Ceuta because the PP has not wanted to support their distribution to the rest of the autonomies. It is urgent to provide a humanitarian response to minors,” the Minister of Territorial Policy defended this week in an interview on Cadena Ser.
In recent days, and in the midst of the crisis due to the arrival of hundreds of people in canoes to the islands, PP and PSOE have once again blamed each other for the blockade. After criticism from Fernando Clavijo, who shares a government with the popular party and who accused Pedro Sánchez of “leaving the Canary Islands alone” in the management of minors, the socialists have attacked the Canary Islands president for what they consider to be a partisan position, by not entering into the clash with the PP to defend his executive.
The Secretary of Institutional Policy and Training of the Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis, regretted on Monday that Clavijo holds “the Popular Party and the PSOE equally responsible in relation to the drama we have in the Canary Islands involving, fundamentally, children and unaccompanied girls who reach the coasts.” “The enemy has him at home and sits with him, which is neither more nor less than the Popular Party,” he noted.
“Their enemy, the enemy of the Canarians, is the Popular Party,” insisted Gómez de Celis, who demanded that Clavijo “force his government partner to reach that agreement for the solidarity distribution of the unaccompanied boys and girls who have arrived” to the archipelago or “expel the popular people from the island government.”
The PP then lacked time to enter into the trap shown by the socialists. “Sánchez is using the immigration drama to try to overthrow the Government of the Canary Islands. It is the only thing that Pedro Sánchez intends,” said the spokesman for the Popular Party in Congress, Miguel Tellado, at a press conference.
With the absolute political blockade already confirmed at the Conference of Presidents held in December in Santander, which had migration management on the agenda and in which the central and regional governments were not able to reach any point of consensus, the Executive Pedro Sánchez is already looking for legislative alternatives to respond to the situation in territories such as Ceuta and the Canary Islands.
Moncloa’s plans even include an emergency solution via royal decree that includes a temporary system of balanced distribution between the different autonomies, but this would require the support of the majority of the Congress of Deputies, which in July already overturned the reform of the law. In this context, and in the middle of the negotiations with Junts for the delegation of powers to the Generalitat in immigration matters, the Executive intends to reach an agreement with Puigdemont that includes the situation of unaccompanied minors.
“And if we reach an agreement with Junts for the distribution system, is the PP going to appeal to the Constitutional Court to overthrow it, as Mrs. Ayuso announced?” Ángel Víctor Torres asked himself in the aforementioned Cadena Ser interview. in the Territorial Policy team as well as in that of the Ministry of Migration led by Elma Saiz, and which negotiates directly with Puigdemont’s team, they prefer for now to maintain caution about the development of conversations that are especially complex due to the content and the moment, just before facing the Budgets.
Just a month ago and after the agreement for the bulk of the tax reform, the Catalan independentists came to privately assure that the negotiations on immigration with the Government were in the final stretch and that the content of what had been agreed to date was satisfactory to them. satisfying. But everything went wrong again before Christmas with the latest threat from Puigdemont, who accused Pedro Sánchez of breaking the agreement and demanded that he submit to a question of trust.
According to sources familiar with the negotiation, Junts distanced itself at the last minute by insisting that border control be included among the delegated powers. “When someone enters Catalonia, the police they have to deal with is the Catalan police, the language they have to learn is Catalan, the country they have to respect and know they are in is Catalonia,” cried Míriam Nogueras in Congress last December. Privately, the Executive insists that border control, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, is a red line.
The solution that the Government is attempting to address the situation of migrant minors is, therefore, not simple. Mainly because, as in almost everything, it depends on Junts, a party that already added its votes to those of the PP and Vox in the month of July to overthrow the immigration law and that demands management powers in clear dispute with the xenophobic Alliança Catalana for the harshest anti-immigration speech.
And in the middle of the crossfire, an approach. As they already raised at the Conference of Presidents of Santander, Lehendakari Imanol Pradales and Fernando Clavijo made public this Thursday their proposed agreement for an extraordinary distribution of unaccompanied migrant minors. The purpose of this distribution is, according to the Canarian Government, to guarantee the care of children and young people while relieving tension in the resource network in the archipelago, which currently protects approximately 5,600 minor migrants alone.
The Canary Islands and Euskadi are committed to activating an extraordinary mechanism that allows “the distribution of unaccompanied migrant minors and guarantees their superior interests,” while resolving “the situation experienced by the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Euskadi.”
Similarly, the Canary Islands and Euskadi insist in their proposal that it is the Spanish Government that “has the responsibility of effectively promoting the equitable distribution of minors, actively cooperating and providing the corresponding material and economic resources.”
For this reason, they seek to “guarantee that minors have access to a safe environment, adapted to their needs and rights” that they demand be financed with state and European funds and with the coordination of the Ministries of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. That is, they ask that the State, and not the regional governments, be the ones to pay for this care.
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