“Lamine Yamal? It’s a crack!” The four smile when we ask them about the Barcelona star and the last European Championship. They talk about us as their role model. A talented and humble person who succeeds in his professional field.
They are young people who have arrived in Catalonia in recent years. They are already studying, and waiting to get work permits all at once. “I love making movies.”Madu says. To Musa, to welder. “A lot.” To Abed to cook. And in Ebrima, IT.
A lot of time is being devoted, at the moment, to Catalan study“Little by little the pool fills up, doesn’t it?” laughs Musa. He has just turned 18. He is from Gambia. He has been in a juvenile detention center for about a year and now he is out without papers.
With the recent reform of immigration systems, it seems that all these young people, In just three months, they will get their work permit. And residency is not his issue. “Some of my friends have been waiting for eight or 10 months,” says Ebrima. He applied for the papers seven years ago.
He is also 18 years old. He did an internship at a supermarket, but his boss couldn’t hire him because he didn’t have a work permit yet.
“I’m calm, but when the subject of papers comes to mind, I get very upset.”
How do they live the immigration debate?
Public debate is still focused, for now, on how independent societies will receive these young people. Specifically, this Tuesday, the House of Representatives The process of immigration reform must begin. So that all lands take part of it in a binding manner.
The four young men are aware of this, and they are also aware of the hype that is often repeated on social media about the group of young foreigners. “When people don’t talk about us well, I think it must be so,” says Musa. “Everyone has their own ideas.”
“None of us who come here think of stealing,” Madu says regretfully.We come to work, study and live.“He arrived from Gambia when he was only 15 years old, on a pastoral trip to the Canary Islands. Now he will be two years old when he is in Spain.
“They always talk bad about us on the networks, but I don’t follow their game.”
In a few days, he will have to leave the juvenile detention center where he still lives, because age tests have shown that he is 18. “It doesn’t affect me personally,” says Ebrima. “I don’t answer wrongly either. I don’t follow their game.”
Search for host families
“Of course, when I get the papers, I will go back to Algeria to see my family,” says Abed, 20, who has already finished his stay at the centre and is now hoping to meet a host family.
Together with the other boys in the group, he meets every week with the references of the Punt de Reférence association. They search Families that children can stay with for nine months. A great way to build connections with locals, learn the language and get in direct contact with Catalan culture.
“I live with a girl named Joanna,” says Moses. “She’s like my mom.”Joanna is 77 years old and is determined to learn Catalan. “It’s hard for me, but I love it.”
The association covers food and basic needs. They have already received sixty people in the 22 years of operation of the project.
“More than 70% of young people continue their relationship with their host family after the cohabitation ends,” says Barbara Port, from Pont de Reverencia.
From the association, they also noticed that. Improvements in immigration procedures They do not arrive as quickly or as often as expected. In the meantime, they accompany them so that they can complete some studies and build relationships in Catalonia.
They have now finished the short film “We Are Tomorrow’s Future” in collaboration with Tala’e Agency.
“I was thinking about the past,” says one of the people involved in the shoot.Now I think about the present and the future.“
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