Government and Canary Islands agree on urgent legal reform to distribute migrant minors

The Government of Spain and the Canary Islands have agreed on an urgent reform of the Immigration Law to distribute unaccompanied migrant minors arriving in the country among all the autonomous communities and alleviate those that are already experiencing an "emergency" situation in the matter.

This contingency is currently being experienced, with objective data, in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, hence the initial proposal is aimed at alleviating these three territories, given the pressure they are under, since the number of minors they host far exceeds their capacities to guarantee the rights they are entitled to.

This was stated in a press conference by the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the Canarian President, Fernando Clavijo, who nevertheless maintain differences on the procedure to be followed when promoting this legislative reform.

There are legal loose ends to be polished, although it is intended to be approved either in the form of a decree law, as the Canary Islands wants, or a bill with urgent debate and single reading, as proposed by the central government, next September.

Before its approval, which both parties hope will be supported by the PP, the initiative will be debated in a sectoral conference with all the autonomous communities, although Torres has already warned that the law will empower the central government to impose the distribution of minors and proceed with their transfer if there is no agreement.

The text that Torres presented this Monday to the Canarian President, and in whose drafting the Ministers of Youth and Migration have also intervened, establishes that when the reception resources for migrant minors of a community are above 150% of their capacity, as is already the case with the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, "the law will be applied" to promote their referral to other regions of the country, depending on their GDP and population, as agreed in 2022 in a Sectoral Conference, Torres stressed.

In the case of the Canary Islands, it is considered that its reception quota is 2,000 minors, so from 3,000 (50% above what is set), the referral resources to other regions would be activated. With the current situation, that would mean that 2,500 unaccompanied minors should leave the Canary Islands.

The governments of Sánchez and Clavijo maintain other legal differences regarding how to proceed from now on, that is, when more unaccompanied minors arrive in pateras and cayucos to already saturated territories, which will most likely happen in the islands, as the flow is not expected to stop.

Clavijo intends that all minors who exceed their quota of 3,000 be automatically assigned to other communities by the State after their rescue and disembarkation on the islands and that they be referred "within a maximum period of fifteen days" to another community, which would be responsible for carrying out the bone tests that determine their age, since there are now 1,800 children on the islands waiting for that test and the waiting list for them is six months.

The Government of Spain believes that this request for the receiving communities to determine the age of the children they receive is reasonable, but asks for time to study this maximum period of 15 days to undertake the referral, a matter that both parties will discuss in a new bilateral meeting, with the purpose of being able to have a definitive text in ten or fifteen days.

Both Fernando Clavijo and Ángel Víctor Torres have expressed optimism about the success of this legal reform, to the point that the former has expressed confidence that it will have more than 176 favorable votes in the Congress of Deputies and will not be affected by any veto in the Senate. Nor does he believe that it runs any risk in a hypothetical appeal to the Constitutional Court, because it addresses an emergency situation and the best interests of the minors.

"It is common sense and justice. There will be a political negotiation because we are not going to a decree law that is going to fail. We have to stop the bleeding at this time to prevent the problem from continuing to worsen over time," said the Canarian president.

The Minister of Territorial Policy hopes that this legislative reform will have the support of the PP, which already supports it in the Canary Islands and Ceuta, which will allow, he stressed, that from now on the law will be imposed, with the corresponding financial file, in territories that now refuse to host unaccompanied migrant minors, referrals that will be decided jointly between the autonomous communities concerned and the national Executive, given the failure of voluntary solidarity so far.