The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday a royal decree law to articulate a permanent mechanism for the relocation of unaccompanied migrant minors from arrival areas such as the Canary Islands and Ceuta when their occupancy reaches 300% of their capacity.
It has done so after closing an agreement with Junts last Monday night that guarantees the support of this formation for its validation in Congress, which is expected for the first half of April, and will mean the transfer of 4,000 minors from the Canary Islands and 400 from Ceuta in this first year to the rest of the autonomous communities.
The approved text modifies article 35 of the immigration law with four added points, which establish the following:
The data: The communities will give their reception figures before March 31
The first step to execute the relocation of minors is to know how many young people each autonomous community welcomes, and for this, the Government will ask the autonomous communities to certify it before March 31.
If the communities do not provide their data, the Government would use its own records to continue with the procedure.
Migratory contingency from triple the occupancy
The royal decree law protects in any case the autonomy of the Sectoral Conference on Children and Adolescents to modify, unanimously, any aspect of the royal decree law.
If no other different criterion is agreed, the text establishes that when an autonomous community reaches triple its structural occupancy to care for minors, it may declare that it is in a situation of migratory contingency and thus it will be transferred to the Government, which will activate the distribution mechanisms.
To calculate the ordinary reception capacity of a community, the data of minors from all the communities will be added and the population of the entire country will be divided by that number.
Then, the population of the autonomous community will be divided by that last number and the result is what will be considered the ordinary capacity of each autonomous community
The distribution: the calculations are yet to be done
The royal decree law dictates the criteria according to which the State will determine the new location of the children, according to objective criteria, which are practically the same as those agreed in 2022 by the autonomous communities in a Sectoral Conference.
Specifically, and always if the Sectoral Conference does not approve otherwise unanimously, the following factors will be taken into account, with this weighting: population (50%), per capita income (13%), unemployment rate (15%), effort (6%), structural dimensioning of the system of places (10%), border city (2%), insularity (2%) and dispersion ((2%).
The Government has said that it does not yet have figures on how many children and adolescents each community will have to welcome as it does not have updated data from the autonomous communities, but Junts has stated that, according to the agreement reached, Catalonia will receive between 20 and 30 and Madrid will welcome more than 700.
According to the latest estimate from the Government, from last October based on population criteria and reception effort, the Community of Madrid and Andalusia had a deficit of 1,145 and 839 places, respectively, for the reception of minors in general, not only migrants, and the Valencian Community should create 764 new places.
The law will contemplate the transfers of the 4,400 minors who are in the Canary Islands and Ceuta within a year and, for those areas that are declared strained based on this new framework, that the new minors who arrive in these territories can be transferred in 15 days.
The financing: 100 million euros for 2025
One of the most important elements for the communities is financing and, in this regard, the Government has assured that "financial sufficiency is guaranteed" through a fund attached to the Ministry of Youth and Childhood for which an extraordinary credit of 100 million euros will be created for this year.
The Executive has not specified what exactly this item will cover, although it has detailed that the amount will vary from one year to another depending on the circumstances.
The opposition of the PP communities
The obstacle to carrying out this entire mechanism is the opposition of the autonomous communities of the PP shown so far, alleging lack of transparency on the part of the Government when designing it or alluding to their inability to welcome more minors because their resources are also saturated.
Yesterday, the president of the Valencian Generalitat assured that the community "will not admit more distributions of illegal immigration" after an agreement with Vox to move forward with its budgets and the PP has indicated this Tuesday that its communities will not admit more minors if the State does not finance it.
The Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has gone further and has warned that she will appeal the text in the courts and in the EU.
Government sources have specified that they do not contemplate sanctions in the event that the autonomous communities really refuse to comply with the law, but they have indicated that they will work to make the PP understand that it is a matter of State.
A historical demand in the face of a failed model
What was approved today by the Government responds to a historical demand from the Canary Islands in the face of the saturation of their resources to care for unaccompanied migrant minors who arrive in the archipelago, since, according to the current framework, these remain under the tutelage of the territory to which they arrive.
After a 2024 of record arrivals along the Canary route, the archipelago is the guardian of 5,800 minors and, for more than a year, the government of the islands and the central government have worked to move the initiative forward.
PSOE, Sumar and Coalición Canaria took it to Congress in July of last year, but it did not pass its consideration due to the lack of support from Junts, Vox and the PP.
