Poor migration management

Immigrants rescued in waters near the Canary Islands are still in the provisional camp installed on the Arguineguín dock, waiting to be transferred.Quique Curbelo / EFE

More than 10,000 immigrants have arrived in the Canary Islands irregularly so far this year and several thousand have landed on the Levantine and Balearic coasts.

Repatriation mechanisms have been paralyzed by the closure of borders and if the reception system had serious deficiencies before the pandemic, the increase in arrivals now seriously worsens the situation.

Although the health crisis and the economic recession hit Europe, migratory flows do not subside.

And when one route closes, others gain momentum.

The agreement reached with the Government of Morocco to avoid boat trips has reduced arrivals to the coast of Cádiz in the last year, but routes from Algeria to the Balearic Islands, Alicante and Murcia, and from Senegal or Mauritania to the Canary Islands have been intensified .

In Melilla there are more than 2,000 immigrants in unfortunate conditions of overcrowding, but the most delicate point is in the Canary Islands, where deficiencies in the management of reception and reception are on the way to causing a crisis.

Although the number of arrivals is far from the more than 30,000 people that were registered in 2006, the peak of the crisis of the cayucos, the increase is very fast.

Added to the scarcity of resources in this case is the lack of cooperation between the different ministries with responsibility in the matter.

In 2019 there were barely 70 places and although 3,500 have now been enabled in public centers and hotels, the solution is not satisfactory.

More than a thousand immigrants live in inhospitable tents on the Arguineguín dock (Gran Canaria), while the humanitarian organizations that serve them observe with concern how the hostility of the population towards foreigners grows.

These situations show the weakness of the reception structure and the differences not only in management but also in sensitivity that are observed.

The Migration Ministry has asked the Defense Ministry for facilities that can be set up as a reception place, but has not received the response it expected.

Neither Interior meets the transfer requirements to the Peninsula, where there are reception centers with more than 40% of the vacant places.

Added to this is an exasperating slowness in the processing of asylum applications, and in some cases dehumanized with the separation of young children from their mothers.

An instruction from the Las Palmas Prosecutor's Office forces them to separate until a DNA test proves the relationship, and that can take months.

That the pandemic requires all the attention at this time is no excuse for not addressing this issue efficiently and with respect for human rights.

Management must meet the values ​​of Spanish and European society.