You are not aware, but you have come across them many times. They may even have invited you to the birthday of one of your children or share the excursions of your group scout. Their names are Sady, Sheriff, Micaela, Daniel, Lamina, Ana. They have been seen holding hands with their brothers, entering the school. Or sitting at the end of the platform, waiting for the subway. His routine is drenched with fear. The fear of being identified at the gate of a park, of setting foot in an outpatient clinic, of arousing any suspicion that attracts the attention of the authorities and destroys the path traveled and the hopes accumulated over the years at a stroke.
Forget the alarmist propaganda you have heard about foreign minors living in our country. The reality is infinitely scarier. For one out of every five migrant children and adolescents who are part of our society, administrative irregularity is the closest thing to living in a regime of apartheid.
The next few months offer an opportunity to end this unbearable injustice.
A study presented this week by our organizations – Save the Children and the foundation for Cause – offers an adjusted photograph of children without papers in Spain, marked by the high risk of poverty and the violation of fundamental rights. For foreign children, the absence of a residence permit and a personal identification number hinders education in all its phases, confronts them with the arbitrariness of health institutions, excludes them from effective access to protection and justice, multiplies their vulnerability to violence, physical and mental abuse, and even exploitation and trafficking. In places like Melilla, this situation reaches Kafkaesque levels, with the invisibility of children born in the city itself but expelled from the educational system for lacking certain roles.
The magnitude of this challenge should set off all the alarms of a rule of law. According to our estimates, around 147,000 migrant girls and boys are in this situation today (see graph). Approximately half of this population is less than 10 years old and the vast majority comes from Latin America, from where thousands of families have arrived in Spain in recent years fleeing the institutional collapse and violence. The most populated autonomous communities –Catalonia, Madrid, Valencia and Andalusia– present the highest absolute numbers of children without papers, but it is in other communities where the concentration is higher. Asturias and Galicia, for example, have irregularity rates in boys and girls above 35%.
The starting point for this conversation should be simple: even in the intricate and polarized immigration policy debate, it is possible to agree that a child is, above all else, a child. The other administrative and political considerations about your legal situation or that of your parents are subject to this main idea. The protection and welfare of all minors constitute an indisputable obligation of States, in addition to a scale of the dignity of their societies and the quality of their democracies.
There is nothing simple or quick in eradicating child poverty, we know that well. But in this case we have an ace up our sleeve. The political decision to regularize immigrant families with children would automatically solve a considerable part of the problem we face. What other countries have done comparable to ours due to its economic and political context –from Portugal, Italy and France to Canada, Colombia and the United States–, Spain can take advantage of the situation opened by covid-19 to propose exceptional measures that solve exceptional problems. A simple answer such as regularization can be decisive in reducing the suffering of thousands of children and facilitating minimum levels of social inclusion, precisely the firm commitment that this government has made.
Time is running against us. According to our forecasts, the crisis derived from the coronavirus could increase the number of immigrants in an irregular situation in Spain by more than 160,000 workers (an increase of 42% over current figures). To this must be added the situation of irregularity of boys and girls derived from the anticipated rejections of requests for international protection, which our analysis has estimated in some 13,000 more cases.
The incorporation of parents into the formal economy would not only tangibly reduce the social vulnerability of their families, but would also entail an important tax benefit for society as a whole. According to our calculations, direct taxes and contributions to Social Security for regularized workers would reach the point of almost completely compensating the State’s investment in the health and education of its minors.
The question is not whether to regularize about 147,000 immigrant children in our country, but when and how it will be done. If you have any doubts, look into the eyes of your children and put yourself in the situation of Salka, Mustafa, Heidi and Gabriel. Everything from there is simpler.
Gonzalo Fanjul is director of research at for Cause. Andrés Conde is CEO of Save the Children Spain.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/analysis-growing-up-without-papers-in-spain/
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