Minors who have been regularized: "We have come to look for a future"

BarcelonaSince arriving in Barcelona, Silvia has been living with administrative irregularity. At twelve years old, she followed in the footsteps of her mother, Angela, who the summer of the pandemic emigrated from Honduras trusting that she could soon regularize her situation. Seeing that it would not be easy, she paid for the girl's plane ticket and almost two years later she landed here, unaware that sharing a bed in a rented room awaited her. She doesn't remember how many apartments she's been through, but she does remember the day she realized she would be "different", when the school planned a trip abroad and she didn't have a passport.

Sílvia is one of the 30,000 creatures in Catalonia who survived without papers, at least until the extraordinary regularization, which close with 1.17 million applications in the State (257,000 in Catalonia). Of these petitions, 11% are from minors under fifteen years of age. For Save the Children, the process has been beneficial in granting rights and protection to the group because the requirements of the ordinary route have been softened, explains Jennifer Zuppiroli, a specialist in childhood and migration for the NGO, but she regrets that the Spanish government did not accept the proposal to create "independent applications" for minors to address complicated situations. Minors who are regularized will have a five-year residence permit, while for adults it is only one year.

Emotional distress

For Ángela, the worst part has been seeing Silvia "lose the joy of adolescence." Similar anguish is experienced at Sandra's home, an Argentine mother who arrived in 2022 with three children between two and ten years old to reunite with her husband, who had arrived a few months earlier. Although the parents have tried to shield the children from nervousness and fears due to the situation, the eldest son – who is now fourteen – has not been able to escape it: “He wanted to be my father, my husband, my brother, and it has been my job to tell him that I am the one who has to take care of them,” reveals the mother, convinced that having taken the step of emigrating will serve for the children to have a future.

From the Casal dels Infants, an organization that has been helping vulnerable children for decades, it is highlighted that the little ones suffer the economic impact of the "precariousness and job insecurity" of undocumented parents, who cannot access benefits, as well as "an emotional cost" that entails not being able to return to the country of origin and the breaking of family ties or the discomfort at home.

Sandra's case demonstrates to what extent laws and bureaucracy disregard family units, causing these children's lives to follow a rollercoaster depending on their parents' luck. The couple's asylum applications were accepted separately: the mother on one hand, and the father and children on the other. This secured them a provisional work permit that allowed them to get by. However, the delay in resolutions led Sandra to give up on asylum and seek residency through studies. The surprise came a few months ago when the man – and therefore, the children – had their asylum denied. They are now awaiting the resolution of appeals and also the application filed in the extraordinary process.

“We came because the children ate meat or milk once a week and here, despite everything, we can buy a pack of burgers and fruit,” explains Sandra, who recalls how she didn't stop moving to find a roof over their heads. First, she paid for a hotel with her savings, and then she moved to social housing and rented rooms. Now all five live in an apartment that a friend has lent them at a good price, but they are hopeful that with the papers, the situation will improve and they might even be able to afford a mortgage.

Inheriting irregularity

A life free from hardship is what Lidia also seeks, who already knows what it is to leave the darkness of irregularity. She is 26 years old and, without knowing it, arrived from Honduras a few weeks pregnant. Until her body told her enough, she continued working in cleaning and caring for the elderly. In her country, she left behind with her mother a three-year-old son whom she has not seen again and with whom, when she was a year and a half old, she tried to emigrate to the United States. Shortly after arriving, she was deported: "I spent a month walking with him in my arms, that's why I thought it would be easier in Spain without children".

He was mistaken. His daughter was born in Barcelona, but since the citizenship is acquired by blood (ius sanguinis) and not by place of birth, the girl inherited the maternal irregularity (only in some countries, babies obtain nationality within a year). However, mother and daughter received good public attention, but without a NIE she could not apply for the single-parent family card and the aid she was entitled to. “Luckily, at the Casal dels Infants they helped me a lot,” she thanks. At the beginning of this year, Lidia got the favor of a woman who gave her a three-month contract in exchange for paying the Social Security quota out of her own pocket. “For now, life has changed very little for us,” she admits, but she sees a visit to Honduras as closer. “I dream of being able to hug my son again and for all three of us to live here,” she exclaims.

Excluded cases

While entities and lawyers agree that a large majority of children will have been able to regularize their situation, Save the Children warns that the procedure has been a "missed opportunity" because it has overlooked specific profiles, such as children living in single-parent families, with uncles or grandparents, or because it has been impossible for them to obtain parental authorization to sign the documentation. Similarly, children with parents with criminal records, who pay the consequences of their parents, have been left out of the process. Another group of those largely excluded from the procedure have been unaccompanied minors for whom the administration did not process the documentation upon reaching the age of majority. "In the end, children are left in insecurity," concludes the entity's representative.