On Wednesday, a meeting between Spanish and regional government representatives will discuss the distribution of unaccompanied migrant minors who have arrived in the Canary Islands. It is estimated that there are some 6,000 migrants under the age of eighteen in the Canaries.
The Balearic government's minister for families, Catalina Cirer, said recently that the Balearics would take some of these minors "out of responsibility and solidarity".
However, the closer it has got to Wednesday's meeting, the stance of the Partido Popular in the Balearics has seemed to alter. There has been no statement as such, but attention has been drawn to the fact that the Balearics are on a migratory route, that there are already 243 unaccompanied minors and that the region would struggle to take many more.
At a meeting on Monday to coordinate Wednesday's meeting, PP spokesperson Sebastià Sagreras called for the Balearics to be given special treatment precisely because the islands are on a migratory route.
While it is the case that the Council of Mallorca's social services, who assume responsibility for these young migrants, have only limited wherewithal to accommodate them, there are plenty of politics attached to the Spanish government's scheme for distribution.
This is because the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has threatened to break all agreements with PP regional governments if the PP go along with the scheme. Vox aren't part of the Balearic government but the PP rely on them for legislative support. For this reason, the Prohens administration in the Balearics has adopted a rather more ambiguous position to that which Cirer announced previously.
1 comment
To be able to write a comment, you have to be registered and logged in
I am not educated in these matters, but if you can't house your own people, and appear to have no desire to improve their lives, why decide to bring more migrants into the community and help them?