The Ministry of Migration restructures its team for the second time in a year during the crisis in the Canary Islands

In addition to the response to the arrival of more than 20,000 migrants to the Archipelago in 2020 and the management of the Canary Islands Plan, the Secretary of State has started in recent months the first steps to reform the reception system for asylum seekers in Spain, which seeks to end with a format based mainly on grants to NGOs to be replaced, throughout different phases, by a competitive competition system. As explained from the institution led by Hana Jalloul, the change in the general direction of Inclusion is part of this period of transformation, with the aim of "approaching this change of model with a team that is as focused as possible and with proven experience in transitions. towards new management models ", after having set the guidelines for the process in mid-December, with the support of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).

As they defend from Migrations, Maite Pacheco has been selected to face what they consider the "challenge of 2021" of the General Directorate of Inclusion and Humanitarian Attention, the change of model of the reception system, due "to her extensive experience in the management of transitions towards new management models, in humanitarian emergencies, its close link with the third sector and with local administrations and its vast experience in unifying projects at the international level ", they detail from the Secretary of State for Migration.

Francisco Dorado will leave his post eight months after his appointment. After decades of experience as an expert lawyer in Immigration, a profession he practiced for 18 years from the coordination of the legal advisory department of the Granada City Council, the lawyer assumed the position of general director of Inclusion and Humanitarian Attention at the end of April. Then, Migrations already ordered a first restructuring of the main positions of the department, three months after having formed its own team after the appointment of Hana Jalloul as Secretary of State.

In this time, Dorado has faced the increase in migrant arrivals to the Canary Islands without a stable reception network to house them on the islands, as well as the first steps towards the new reception system in which the Government works, such as the operational plan promoted by EASO, after the development of an external evaluation of which hardly any details have transpired.

This last change occurs when the Secretary of State works in extremis in the installation of the 7,000 reception places announced in November by José Luis Escrivá. At the moment, only 300 people have been transferred to one of the seven temporary camps that make up the first phase of the so-called Plan Canarias. This is the León School, the only operational reception space so far of those committed by the Minister of Inclusion. At the moment, most of the people arriving to the islands by boat remain sheltered in emergency in hotels - empty of tourists due to the pandemic - but many of these hotel resources will lose permission to host migrants on December 31, according to the announcement. Mayor of Mogán (Gran Canaria).

Until now, the Director of Inclusion has been at the forefront of the preparation of the six camps whose opening will be finalized in the coming weeks. "The Secretary of State for Migration appreciates the work that Francisco Dorado has carried out at the head of the general direction," indicate sources from the institution. From the department directed by Jalloul they assure that the Canary Islands Plan is already "on the way" towards the implementation of the 7,000 committed beds and consider "imminent" the closure of some of the hotel resources used as migrant centers since September on a temporary basis.

At the moment, 280 people have been transferred to the León School, the first of the emergency reception resources, opened on December 18. According to sources from the Secretary of State for Migration, the camps set up in the Canarias 50 barracks and in the outer zone of the former CIE del Matorral are "prepared" to receive migrants from hotels in the next two weeks. "On November 20 there was nothing and in a few weeks, Canarias 50 and El Matorral have been enabled. Before the end of January the other three spaces will be ready", they point out.

The profile of Maite Pacheco

Looking ahead to 2021, the Secretary of State intends to focus its efforts on the remodeling of the reception system for which, they say, Pacheco's profile is the "ideal" one. According to the information provided by Migrations, the next Director of Inclusion and Humanitarian Attention between 2015 and 2019 held the direction of Childhood Policies and Awareness in the Spanish Committee of UNICEF, "where she developed the team's change management and established the bases of a new strategy, in a migration and childhood approach ".

Between July 2003 and August 2010, Pacheco was Director of Programs and Operations at the Save the Children Foundation, "where she defined the implementation of the Unification Strategy in the Programs Department," they detail. Between August 2010 and July 2012, also at Save The Children, "he led the merger of the parent company of this organization in Spain with its international agencies (Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina and Paraguay) ", indicate the same sources.

Pacheco will leave her act of councilor in the socialist municipal group of the Madrid City Council, from where until now she has served as spokesperson and second vice president of the Ordinary Permanent Commission on Families, Equality and Social Welfare.

This is the second restructuring unleashed in the Ministry of Inclusion in less than a year on the teams of the Secretary of State for Migration. At the end of April, during the state of alarm, Irune Aguirrezabal was suspended as General Director of Migrations, after having been in charge of the approval of several measures during the two months that she held the position, such as the granting of a work permit to unaccompanied foreign migrant minors over the age of 16 and the plan to recruit 350 foreign doctors to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, among others.

Santiago Yerga, the then general director of Inclusion and Humanitarian Attention, was appointed head of the Migration Department. The department in charge of the reception program for immigrants and asylum seekers then passed into the hands of Francisco Dorado, now relieved within the framework of the new structural change that the Secretary of State is facing eight months later.