The Canary Islands Government has agreed this Monday to extend the declaration of an exceptional situation for unaccompanied minors arriving in the islands to maintain the staffing reinforcement responsible for processing their files until 2028.
"This extension will allow for the continuity over the next two years of the agreement made in July 2024, which enabled the hiring of 19 social work professionals and 20 administrative staff for a total amount of 1.7 million euros," explained the Executive's spokesperson, Alfonso Cabello, at the press conference following the Governing Council meeting.
Asylum, migratory contingency, and resident minors
He indicated that this reinforcement will allow us to continue "managing and streamlining" the processing of all files and "continue advancing on the three well-differentiated fronts we have," namely, migrant minors seeking asylum, those who arrived after the declaration of an extraordinary migratory contingency in the Canary Islands, and those who were already on the islands.
Cabello has detailed that the Canary Islands have sent 755 complete files to the Government Delegation for their transfer to the mainland in compliance with the migratory contingency declaration, and has said that they are processing the 288 transfer resolutions received from the Delegation for the 572 new arrivals of minors.The spokesperson indicated that of these latter, 173 have already been sent to the peninsula and that, currently, the Canary Islands are hosting 4,147 unaccompanied minor migrants.This is, he said, "a figure that remains far higher than what corresponds to us, according to the distribution made by the State Government itself, which is why we are forced not only to maintain this extraordinary reinforcement of personnel but also to continue allocating very significant financial resources for this purpose.""What we expect from the State is collaboration, help, and support, as well as compliance with the rulings issued by the Supreme Court. We believe that institutional loyalty and inter-administrative collaboration are necessary to address this issue that keeps the Canary Islands facing a migratory contingency and in a totally exceptional situation regarding migration," he added.The spokesperson alluded to the statements made last Friday by the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, in which he urged the Canary Islands Executive to complete and deliver to the Government Delegation in the islands the files of all unaccompanied migrant minors who are to be relocated to other communities in the country.In that regard, he has stated that they are encountering a problem because "resolutions are issued that dictate to which autonomous community a minor must go, and those resolutions, and whoever assigns them to the autonomous community, are the Government of the State.""When the Canary Islands Autonomous Community contacts that autonomous community, which is the one that has to receive a minor, it tells us that it does not have a spot and that the State Government is failing to comply with an agreement for funding to be able to open those spots. In that context, the Government of the Canary Islands cannot complete that transfer," he asserted.Cabello recalled that the State Government committed to financing 100 million euros for these minors' places and assured that this money has neither been allocated nor made available."We are so clear about this because out of those 100 million euros, there is a part that was also for us, because some of the positions were also being created in the Canary Islands. Therefore, we are having problems executing the resolutions because the State Government is not doing its part," he pointed out.