ACN
The president of the Cabildo of Tenerife, Ricardo Melchior, assured this Tuesday that it will be necessary to put "all the boats with all the illegal immigrants in Moncloa" - residence of President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - so that the central government "realizes" what happens on a weekend in the Canary Islands with the massive arrival of illegal immigrants.
The president of the Island Institution pointed out - in the press conference in which he announced the issues addressed in the Government Council - that he cannot explain how something that he recognized "is very difficult to solve but in which progress can be made" can be treated with "such little efficiency".
Melchior wondered that if it is impossible to detect the presence of mother ships "well, imagine if we are capable of detecting a reactor or something similar?". However, he opined that the Ministry of the Interior is the one that "should know not only if there are mother ships or not, but even the last detail".
"Or is there not a minimum of information? Or do we not know that the engines that the canoes bring, which are Yamaha, have a number and it can be known where they are bought and where they are sold? Is it necessary to be Sherlock Holmes or James Bond to find that out?", Melchior asked.
The president of the Cabildo of Tenerife - the island of the Archipelago to which the majority of illegal immigrants have arrived in boats - also criticized that the ministers and even the president of the Spanish Government himself, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, can attend tomorrow Wednesday the Champions League football match, in Paris, when "in six months a minister has not been able to go to Mauritania" to learn about the situation in that country.
"I was invited to the game and I cannot go because I have too many things to do here," Melchior specified, who pointed out that it seems that "for the ministers those things are important."
He recalled that it is true that the issue of Repsol in Bolivia "is important for the Government of Spain, but 100, 200, 300 or 1,500 people do not die as here so far this year, as a consequence of Repsol's actions in Bolivia or Bolivia's actions on Repsol."
Melchior also did not forget the European Union, which "is absolutely unconscious" and perhaps, he said, it will not only be necessary to put the boats in Madrid "but also in Brussels so that the EU is aware of the problem."
TWO MILLION EUROS
Likewise, he clarified with irony that the Islands at this time do not know what destination to give to the money that the EU contributes in immigration matters. "We do not know what to allocate the two million euros that could be divided by 1,500 lost lives, so each life would cost just over 1,000 euros," he said.
The president of the Tenerife Corporation maintained that the Canary Islands, Spain and Europe are not facing a problem "of invasion of Martians" and considered that "we can all be great fans of football or basketball, but another thing is the life of human beings who have the same right to live and survive whether they are white, yellow, black or red." For this reason, he demanded that the Spanish State and the European Union (EU) give the utmost importance to this phenomenon.
Finally, Melchior announced that on June 2, the Cabildo of Tenerife will hold a monographic plenary session to address the issue of immigration and that at the end of June, the Cooperation Hall will take place on the Island, which will be attended by leading figures in the world in the field of cooperation, solidarity and strategy to help those countries from which immigrants come, he concluded.
