The Official Gazette of the Canary Islands published this Friday the new Territorial protocol for the reception of unaccompanied foreign migrant minors (men). The text already formally and legally establishes that the Autonomous Community will not assume guardianship of other men “who have been rescued by the State at sea, or who are intercepted by the Civil Guard and the National Police upon their arrival in the coastal territory exercising border functions”.
According to the text, promoted by the Ministry of Social Protection, Equality, Youth, Children and Family, these “children and adolescents” who They are not “helpless” because “they have the immediate attention of the State.”
That is to say, in response to the “best interests of the minor” and taking into account the “aggravated migratory emergency” experienced by the islands, “delivery and receipt do not take place by the child protection services of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands.
From now on, it will be the law of the island government that its president will decide, Fernando Clavijoalready announced on September 2, when he warned that he would take over the state government before the courts for “breach of duty” in its “exclusive competence” in matters of immigration policy.
On that day, the government of the Canary Islands declared the declaration of “aggravated migration emergency” to, according to the agreement, “enable an adequate response to a clearly exceptional situation”. In the words of the regional president, “guarantee the rights of minors who arrive on our shores”.
The facts
At that time, the Canary Islands assumed guardianship of 5,200 oresthe rest of the Autonomous Communities had accepted only face 347and the islands’ social welfare services were “overstretched.”
According to the advisor herself, Candelaria Delgado“every month, we spent more than 14 million of our budget” in this competition, which will bring us a deficit of 90 million at the end of the year and failure to comply with other obligations.”
But not only that. Clavijo denounced the fact that the police and the Civil Guard handed over minors “directly to NGOs, without informing the Regional Executive“. And they did it “in bundles, as with a simple delivery note Without identifying each minor and without the participation of the Public Prosecutor’s Office”, guarantor of children’s rights.
These circumstances have meant that, according to the Canarian president’s version, “we do not guarantee the rights of those fleeing war“.
According to data held by the Canary Islands government, More than 1,100 of the 5,300 boys and girls already under their care come from Mali“They are not migrants, but asylum seekers, whether minors or not, and they have rights that the government’s disorderly action prevents them from preserving.”
Politics
This protocol will now oblige state authorities to “assume” to the fullest extent the consequences of the “international responsibilities of sea rescue and the constitutional powers of border control and migratory flows”.
And only after identifying each minor, examine them,” and with prior audition during a personal interview“With it, they can be “affected or located, depending on the legal situation in which they find themselves.”
Politically, this decision has the support of the entire parliamentary arc of the island, with the exception of the representatives of Vox. The Government of the islands is made up of the Canarian Coalition (CC) and the Popular Party, but PSOE MPs also supported this initiativepresented at the Canary Islands Immigration Forum on September 3 and in Parliament on Friday, September 6.
President Clavijo has gone on the offensive against the Spanish government, feeling powerless and even using the migration crisis “to generate a political conflict” between the government of Pedro Sánchez and the PP of Alberto Nuñez Feijoo.
According to sources close to him, the appointment of the minister Angel Victor Torres as the interlocutor in Madrid for the Canary Islands, aims to “trying to break the coalition of the island executive”.
Torres was president of the Canary Islands in the last regional legislature, thanks to a legislative agreement with small island formations, which removed Clavijo himself from power.
Back in power thanks to his pact with the PP, the leader of the CC decided maintain “institutional loyalty”even supported the investiture of Sánchez, with the vote of its only female deputy in Congress, and asked to meet with the president to seek a solution to the crisis that has lasted for more than a year.
He only received this appointment at the end of August – after six years without Moncloa having scheduled a meeting with the head of the Executive – at the end of the president’s vacation in Lanzarote.
Previously, on August 12, Clavijo had managed to obtain Torres and Miguel TelladoPP spokesman in Congress, interrupted his summer vacation to negotiate the Four points on which the popular and nationalist Canary Islands agree demanding that Moncloa reform the immigration law.
But this secret meeting came to nothing. And the one between Clavijo and Sánchez did not bear fruit either. At this meeting, the President of the Government promised to negotiate “in a few weeks” the reform of the immigration law with the PP, and offered 50 million euros in support for the islands. Clavijo thanked him for the gesture, but reminded him that only this year He has already spent “more than 150 million”.
The reaction
After two weeks, the migratory pressure turned into “extremely serious situations”, when an NGO claimed that it could not take in more unaccompanied minors “because those who were already sleeping on the ground”, and received “a request from the Prosecutors threaten to charge him with homelessness offence to minors”.
It was then that Clavijo announced the measure legalized in this protocol. And in the absence of news from the Government, he met Feijóo, this Tuesday in Tenerife, to sign a joint declaration, with the mediation of Manolo Dominguezleader of the Canarian PP and vice-president of its autonomous government.
This whole process has resulted in this new protocol for receiving minerals. With this, the Canary Islands aim to “safeguard the superior right of the minorwhich is established by the European Charter of the Rights of the Child. Relieve pressure from NGOswho no longer have the means to accommodate more boys and girls.
On the other hand, Clavijo comes up with this legal text legally protect civil servants islands “in the face of threats from the State”. And finally, to transmit to the Government the pressure of an “exclusive competence” of the State, immigration, so that “to lead a national solution”and abandon “political conflict.”
