The Government will give 50 million to the Canary Islands and asks the PP to support the immigration reform

The Government of Spain has committed this Friday to continue negotiating for the PP to join in supporting the reform of the Immigration Law for the referral of unaccompanied migrant minors, as well as to allocate 50 million euros to help the Canary Islands in migration management.

This commitment has been assumed by the central Executive after the meeting held this Friday in La Palma between the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the head of the Canary Executive, Fernando Clavijo, and whose content has been reported to the media by the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres.

In his social networks, President Pedro Sánchez has appealed to the PP to make a responsible opposition and join the agreements and solutions "instead of reproducing the speeches of the most extreme right" in this area, and has guaranteed that the Government of Spain will continue working with the Canary Executive in the face of this challenge, providing economic resources and promoting legislative advances.

Before the media, Minister Ángel Víctor Torres has ruled out regulating the referral of minors by decree law and has insisted on the modification of the Immigration Law as the "only possible solution", but for this it is essential that it be approved by a majority in the Congress of Deputies and, he has admitted, he cannot be considered "neither optimistic nor pessimistic" regarding the outcome of the negotiations with the PP.

For his part, the Canary President, Fernando Clavijo, has stressed that the amount that the archipelago should receive has to be "much higher" than 50 million euros, a figure that the archipelago already received in 2022 and 2023, since the number of minors cared for by the Autonomous Community is also much higher.

"I am not a person to throw in the towel but to fight even harder so that the Canary Islands do not have to bear the entire migration issue alone," said Fernando Clavijo, who welcomed the central government's position of "moving towards meeting and agreement" to ratify Article 35 of the Immigration Law with the aim of making the referral of unaccompanied minors mandatory.

However, the Minister of Territorial Policy has pointed out that in 2022 and 2023 the Canary Islands received an additional 50 million via amendments to the General State Budgets, which is not feasible this year as the budget items have been extended.

Torres has been open to closing this amount, with the participation of the Ministry of Finance, so that the Canary Islands have "an important relief" in addressing the migration situation.

But he has also made it "clear" that in the same way that the competence in matters of adult migrants corresponds to the central Executive, the guardianship of unaccompanied minors is the responsibility of the autonomous communities and therefore the Spanish Government cannot refer them on its own, as it would be outside the constitutional scope.

For this reason, he insisted that the Immigration Law must be changed with a modification that, after being negotiated between the central and Canary executives, was "regrettably" stopped in the Congress of Deputies on July 23.

This is the fastest and most urgent mechanism to guarantee the immediate distribution of minors and the Government wants to continue advancing in the dialogue so that this modification is feasible in September, Torres added.

"We are going to continue working on it," insisted the head of Territorial Policy, who, when questioned about the chances of success of this negotiation, replied that "we will have to ask those who voted no" and did not support a procedure that nine groups in Congress did support.

And in the same way that the Government has not broken off its contact with the parliamentary groups, "I also say clearly that the party with which I spoke the most and with which I exchanged the most documents was the PP, which is demonstrable, and in the end voted no," Torres recalled, to remember that the Popular Party co-governs in the Canary Islands "and knows the problem well".

Therefore, he has appealed to the main formation in the opposition to side with the agreement and not the problem "and not go down in history as the party that prevented" a solution.

The central Executive has also shown its willingness to address this issue at the next Conference of Presidents, scheduled for September in Cantabria, something that Fernando Clavijo also shares because this issue is "a national issue and we have to be coordinated to give a response to these boys and girls and attend to their rights that, as the first world, we are obliged to comply with."