The Congress has validated this Thursday the royal decree law approved by the Government for the relocation of unaccompanied migrant minors from areas with strained resources such as the Canary Islands to other autonomous regions, with the support of the investiture partners and the vote against of PP and Vox.
With 179 votes in favor, 170 against, and 1 abstention, the Congress has endorsed the text, which modifies Article 35 of the Immigration Law to establish a permanent mechanism for the distribution of young people, following the agreement reached with Junts on March 17 for the pro-independence formation to support it.
It is a very different result from what happened on July 23 of last year, when a similar text, in the form of a bill registered by PSOE, Sumar, and Coalición Canaria, did not pass its first stage of processing due to the opposition of PP, Vox, and Junts.
After the vote, the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the head of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, celebrated the result of the vote with an emotional hug. Today was the Minister's last intervention in Congress before undergoing surgery for the cancer he suffers from.
This validation allows the Government to move forward with the implementation of this new mechanism, which in the first year will involve the transfer of about 4,000 young people from the Canary Islands and 400 from Ceuta - the figures are not yet closed - and will allow the overwhelmed regions to refer new minors they receive within 15 days.
A sector conference will specify the relocation criteria
The next step will be the holding of a Sector Conference on Childhood and Adolescence on April 28, in which the criteria for the relocation of minors will finally be established, despite the fact that the Government still does not have the correct data from all the communities.
In the debate, which was attended from the guest gallery by the Canarian president, Fernando Clavijo (CC), PP and Vox were left alone in voting against the initiative compared to the rest of the groups, who made a closed defense of the text and appealed to the Canarian deputies of the PP to vote in conscience and in favor of their land, while criticizing the "racism" of Vox.
Both the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the PSOE deputy, Luc Andre Diuf, have asked the Canarian deputies of the PP if they will "leave their neighbors stranded."
They have reminded them that this rule is the result of dialogue between the Government of Spain and the Canary Islands, where the PP co-governs with Coalición Canaria, and has the support of all the parties of the Canarian Pact for Migration, including the autonomous PP.
Also, the deputy of Sumar Vicenç Vidal has criticized the PP's double standard with respect to migrants and has asked the communities governed by that party who they will ask for help when their reception system collapses: "Today a solidarity mechanism is approved that is useful for Ceuta, for the Canary Islands, but it can also be useful for other territories such as Murcia or the Balearic Islands."
In the same vein, the deputy of Podemos Noemí Santana has criticized the "double discourse" of the PP in the Canary Islands and in other communities where they put obstacles so that these children can develop their lives with dignity.
The deputy of ERC Jordi Salvador has also shown his support for the initiative, who has defended that these children "are not a burden, a threat, or a problem, it is our responsibility" and has said that he does not understand that someone can vote against this royal decree. "For those who do, we have a confessional very close by," he has joked.
For his part, the deputy of Junts, Josep María Cervera, has valued the agreement reached with the Government, which puts an end "to a distribution system that did not work" and that, "due to the breach of others, unnecessarily pressured Catalonia."
The deputy of EH Bildu, Jon Iñárritu, has also described the decree as something "positive," who has valued that progress is being made towards "a unified view towards childhood, wherever it comes from" and has reproached the Government for its "initial opposition" to taking charge of the thousand minor asylum seekers to which the Supreme Court has forced it, while the PNV has shown its support for the rule but has asked that "beyond patches, it provides lasting solutions."
For the PP, a "patch" and an "administrative mess"
On the other hand, the PP deputy Ana Isabel Alós has strongly criticized the royal decree, which she has described as a "patch" and "administrative mess" that will not be a solution for the Canary Islands because it "is limited to distributing the problem without addressing a single one of the causes."
She has recalled that this decree is the result of the cession to the "blackmail of the separatists" for the delegation of powers in immigration to Catalonia, in which the Government has used minors as "currency of exchange."
Vox, for its part, has also shown its rejection of the measure, which it considers "another step in that call effect by the hand of the mafias" and has attacked irregular immigration, which it has blamed for the "progressive Islamization" of Europe.
