The president of Nueva Canarias, Román Rodríguez, has valued the meeting that Fernando Clavijo and Pedro Sánchez will hold this Friday in La Palma to discuss the migratory issues affecting the islands. But he considers it "essential" that the Canarian president convince the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to have his party support the modification of the Immigration Law, making it possible for the thousands of unaccompanied minors in the Canary Islands to be welcomed in solidarity by the different autonomous communities.
In July, PP, Vox, and Junts prevented a bill from being processed in Congress that responded to the demands made by the Canarian Parliament and the CC-PP Government. He highlights, in this regard, that NC has always been in favor of "the reception of migrant minors by the different communities, in a regulated and mandatory manner, taking into account their economic and demographic weight."
And he also recalls the acceptance of an amendment by NC to the Canarian Immigration Pact that "urged the modification of the state law to guarantee the mandatory distribution among the autonomous communities of unaccompanied minors arriving on the Canarian coasts." To avoid the saturation of the Islands' centers and guarantee adequate care.
Reform of the Immigration Law
"The truth is that this situation could begin to be unblocked at the end of July in the Congress of Deputies," with the consideration of a bill to reform article 35 of the Immigration Law (Organic Law 4/2000 on the rights and freedoms of foreigners in Spain and their social integration). This modification requires that when a community exceeds 150% of its reception capacity for unaccompanied migrant minors, a redistribution must be carried out, of a mandatory nature, not voluntary as until now, among the rest of the nationalities and regions. Establishing, likewise, that the transfers can be carried out within 15 days of the minor's registration.
The president of the Canarian nationalists recalls that the bill "did not go ahead due to the negative vote in the Congress of Deputies of the state-level right-wing parties, Vox and PP, and Catalan nationalists, Junts," who "put their narrow partisan interests ahead of the dignified reception of unaccompanied migrant minors and, likewise, turned their backs on a Community, the Canarian one, which faces the care of almost 6,000 alone."
For this reason, the Canarian nationalists value the meeting between Clavijo and Sánchez, as well as the Spanish president's tour of different African states, aware that it is a "complex phenomenon that requires multiple actions." But, also, in the most concrete terms, unblocking the reform of the Immigration Law, for which Clavijo must "try to convince Feijóo to immediately suspend his blocking attitude and collaborate in facilitating the redistribution for the good of migrant minors and the Canary Islands." For Rodríguez, the PP is today "the main obstacle to facilitating the reception of unaccompanied minors by all the autonomous communities."
Racism
On the other hand, NC expresses its "enormous concern about the PP's drift in this matter and the silence in the face of racist statements by leaders such as the mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, as well as the spread of hoaxes by the extreme right that seek to generate hatred and stimulate the violent."
For NC, the state and regional governments, as well as international organizations, "must always act from respect for human rights (and, in particular, those that affect children), intensifying development cooperation and actions in favor of peace." As well as in the permanent search for regularized and legal alternatives that allow combining the desires of migrants for a better life with the needs that Europe has to receive millions of people in the coming decades so that their different economic sectors can function. Thus avoiding exploitation by unscrupulous mafias, the high risk of very dangerous journeys and the numerous deaths at sea; and, at the same time, firmly combating the poison of hatred inoculated by the extreme right, and assimilated by part of the traditional right, that tries to dehumanize them.
