Melilla admits that the migrant minor system supports many families

"It would be dramatic" if there were no minors: many families depend on it

The reception system for unaccompanied migrant minors in Melilla has an economic leg that is almost never mentioned in public. The Minister for Minors, Cecilia González, mentioned it in an interview on the city's public television: if unaccompanied foreign minors ceased to exist, she said, "it would be dramatic" because many families depend on it. The phrase, spread by the Cadena SER Melilla account, was echoed within minutes. Not because it was scandalous, but the opposite: because it confirmed aloud what much of the public took for granted.

What the minister said and in what context

González argued that it "would be dramatic" if unaccompanied foreign minors in Melilla ceased to exist "since many families depend on it." She said this in an interview on local public television, according to the excerpt shared by Cadena SER Melilla and the reference to minute 15 of the broadcast. The phrase is not a defense of the business: it is a warning about the associated employment. The nuance matters, and yet the dominant reading was different. As soon as the fragment circulated, the interpretation closed itself: a public official had just acknowledged that minors are, in addition to people, a source of income for a network of services.

Who really gets paid: centers, agreements and payrolls

The conversation quickly shifted to how the money is distributed. Some estimate that the system moves 5,000 euros per minor, while others recall that an ERC mayor billed 8,000 euros per day for housing migrant minors, according to a journalistic report cited in this regard. Against that reading, another current argues that the minors do not see that money: it would be kept by those who run the supervised centers and contracted entities, not the kids. Both versions share an uncomfortable assumption: the public money dedicated to reception is large enough to make it worth discussing who administers it.

To that dispute is added another suspicion, more political: that the real beneficiary is not the contracted families, but the structures that mediate between the budget and the service. A recognizable cycle is described —identifying a problem, gaining support, creating jobs, producing reports and campaigns that justify their own existence— that would turn reception into just another chiringuito, a sibling of employment plans and cross-subsidies. It is an accusation without public accounting breakdown, and precisely for that reason it works so well in the debate.

The employment argument: tobacco, weapons and other uncomfortable industries

The defense of jobs as a reason to maintain an activity has unsavory precedents. It has been compared to tobacco —prohibiting it would destroy jobs— and to the arms industry, pharmaceuticals or the Vatican itself: activities whose disappearance would also leave many people without a paycheck. The most repeated analogy is prostitution: no one argues it should be maintained because condom manufacturers live off it. The argument, taken to the extreme, becomes absurd on its own, and therein lies its rhetorical strength.

Can the jobs in the reception system be reconverted?

Yes, in theory: the most repeated proposal is to redirect those jobs toward care for the elderly and dependent people, a sector with growing demand and scarce staff. The obstacle is not technical but budgetary: dependency care is financed with other budget lines and other political priorities. It is also noted that if the volume of minors fell, the adjustment would be in employment and contracts, not in discourse. And that the underlying problem is not that there are families working in reception, but that their livelihood depends on the flow not stopping.

The bottom line: a business or a service with a cost?

Here the disagreement is total. Some see it as an intermediation business, of the same family as any other outsourced service that lives off public funds. Others respond that all public services generate employment and that confusing cost with profit is a shortcut. On the margins, more extreme positions appear, such as that of someone who, driven by anger, directly proposes ceding Ceuta and Melilla to stop discussing the matter. It is an outburst, but it measures the temperature of the anger well.

What is foreseeable is that the phrase will continue to be used as a weapon in both directions: some will read it as proof that the system is a business, others as proof that it provides work. What is unlikely to change is the silence on the concrete figures —how much is paid per place, how much reaches the minor, how much is lost along the way—. As long as that breakdown is not published, everyone will continue to read in the same phrase what they already thought.