The Pleno del Congreso de los Diputados will debate this Thursday, April 10, the royal decree-law that reforms Article 35 of the Immigration Law in order to establish the mandatory distribution of unaccompanied migrant minors among the autonomous communities when there is saturation, which is the result of an agreement between the Government and Junts.
Specifically, this is the royal decree-law approving urgent measures for the guarantee of the best interest of children and adolescents in situations of extraordinary migration contingencies. This modifies Article 35 of the Immigration Law and establishes criteria for the distribution of migrant minors among the autonomous communities.
The Government has guaranteed financial sufficiency in the additional provisions of the decree with a fund assigned to the Ministry of Youth and Childhood, which will have an extraordinary credit of 100 million euros in 2025.
The approved text modifies Article 35 of the Immigration Law by adding four points. Article 35 bis establishes that the Sectoral Conference on Childhood and Adolescence maintains its full autonomy and can make its own decisions if agreed upon unanimously. This point also indicates that the community with a presence of unaccompanied foreign minors that triples its ordinary capacity will be in a situation of migration contingency, which will be transferred to the Government to activate relocation mechanisms.
Article 35 ter establishes a series of criteria for the distribution of minors, such as population, per capita income, unemployment rate, previous efforts made, the structural size of the placement system, or the condition of being a border city or island territory. These criteria can also be modified unanimously by the Sectoral Conference on Childhood and Adolescence.
The legislative amendment regulates, in Article 35 quater, how the registration of the unaccompanied minor should be carried out. Thus, when a minor arrives in a community and it is in an extraordinary migration contingency situation, the transfer to the destination community must take place within 15 days of the completion of the minor’s registration.
In order to assess the situation of the reception system, the Ministry of Youth and Childhood requested that the autonomous communities provide the number of unaccompanied migrant minors they are currently attending to before March 31. The Minister of Youth and Childhood, Sira Rego, has given Aragon, which has not sent any data, and Madrid and Extremadura, which, according to the Government, have sent generic data, until the approval of this decree next Thursday to provide more precise information. If not, the Government warns that it will use the latest known data from 2023 to calculate the distribution, which placed Madrid as the region that would receive the most minors, more than 800.
CC.AA DEL PP BELIEVE IT «INVADES AUTONOMOUS COMPETENCES»
On the other hand, most of the communities governed by the PP have shown willingness to challenge the distribution of migrant minors by the Government, considering it «invades autonomous competences.» In this sense, Aragon advanced last week that it had filed an administrative contentious appeal against the Ministry of Childhood and Youth’s requirement. Cantabria has also authorized the General Directorate of the Legal Service to file a constitutional appeal with the Constitutional Court against the royal decree-law, as has Castilla y León.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Presidency, Justice, and Local Administration of the Community of Madrid, Miguel Ángel García Martín, reported on Monday that the regional government will file the appeal with the Constitutional Court for the distribution of unaccompanied minors in the coming hours. On the same day, the Ministry of Families and Social Affairs also announced that it would appeal.
Likewise, the Valencian Community has authorized the initiation of procedures to file a constitutional appeal against the royal decree-law. In its case, it considers that it «represents a clear interference in the competences of the Valencian Community in the field of child protection over which it has exclusive competences.»
In July of last year, the Congress rejected the consideration of the bill registered by PSOE, Sumar, and CC to distribute migrant minors, with the votes against of PP, Vox, and Junts. Since then, the Government has negotiated with parliamentary groups to provide a solution to territories with overcrowding.
The current vote to distribute foreign minors will take place after the Supreme Court gave the Government ten days to take charge of a thousand migrant minors in the Canary Islands who have applied for asylum. This deadline ends on Wednesday, April 9.
WITHDRAWAL OF APPEAL AND RECEPTION OF 1,000 MINORS
Precisely, the central and Canary Islands governments agreed last Thursday to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court and organize the transfer of a total of 1,008 migrant minors seeking asylum from the Canary Islands to the state reception network. The Government initially appealed the Supreme Court’s ruling but ultimately withdrew the appeal after a «productive» meeting with the Canary Islands, as explained by the Minister of Presidency, Felix Bolaños, last Friday.
In statements to the press after an interministerial meeting held in Tenerife, both the Canary Islands President, Fernando Clavijo, and the Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, agreed to analyze the situation of these minors on a case-by-case basis since the circumstances are different.
Thus, Clavijo announced that they would expedite meetings with the Government so that before Wednesday, they coordinate how these minors transition to the international protection network and address the overcrowding problem in the islands.
FUENTE