16/03/2011 Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
Brussels, 16.03.2011 – “Migrant children are children first and their migrant status is secondary,” declared PACE rapporteur Pedro Agramunt (Spain, EPP/CD), speaking yesterday at the opening of a Brussels hearing on undocumented migrant children. “The best interests of the child should remain primordial.”
Participants at the hearing heard at first hand from a range of experts how different countries treated undocumented migrant children in the fields of healthcare, education and housing, including examples of current practice in Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Schools in some countries will register such children without papers, parliamentarians were told, and doctors will treat them without requiring information on their immigration status.
“Ideally all migrant children, irrespective of their status, should have access to the same health, education and housing as national children,” spelled out Michele Le Voy of PICUM, adding that they should not be detained for purposes of immigration control. "Children are children," she said."