The day after the Senate voted on a profoundly modified – and profoundly right-wing – immigration bill, the majority members of the law committee (which will examine the text from the end of November, before its arrival in the Assembly) have a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. If this meeting is not supposed to be decisive, it will at least be an opportunity to take the temperature on the senatorial compromise. A temperature which, according to the thermometer 20 minutesis very variable in the majority.
Part of the group is relieved and takes up the language elements of Gérald Darmanin’s entourage: “A week ago, everyone said that it was impossible, that there would be no voted text, or then without the regularizations, underlines a Renaissance (RE) deputy close to Place Beauvau. There, we have a voted text, certainly with compromises, but with a measure to regularize undocumented immigrants in professions in shortage. » What will satisfy the Renaissance elected officials?
The left wing “not convinced”
“The group first wants to get out of it,” believes another RE deputy. There are those who say that immigration is a strong issue in view of the European elections and that we must emerge victorious from the text to go before the voters. And there are those who think it’s a shitty stick and want to get it over with quickly. They don’t want to lose face in job shortages, but they don’t make it a major point. »
But the most visible division is the one which tears the left wing and the right wing. The left wing, precisely, makes it a key point of this famous article 3 on the regularization of undocumented immigrants in professions in tension. It became in the Senate text an article 4 bis, less restrictive than the current law, which is already very restrictive. In this version, these regularizations are not automatic and always at the discretion of the prefect, as in the current Valls circular. For the promoters of the senatorial compromise, the fact that it is now enshrined in law changes the situation. “I’m not convinced,” responds euphemistically Stella Dupont, MP from the Macronist left wing. I am familiar with the Valls circular and its difficulties of application. I am very attached to the creation, in law, of a specific title for workers in professions in shortage. »
“A real enrichment” of the Senate
In the text which will arrive on the desk of the Assembly, it is not only this point which raises the hackles of the defenders of the original government project, seen as “balanced”: tightening of the criteria for family reunification, toughening of land law, conditioning of family allowances and housing assistance for foreigners to five years of residence, policy of annual migratory “quotas”, and above all elimination of State medical aid (AME) for the homeless. -papers. The deputy close to Gérald Darmanin cited above may well judge that “there has been real enrichment! “, it is an understatement to say that not everyone shares this magnanimity in the majority: “I’m going to be cash, this text no longer resembles anything, says MoDem deputy Erwan Balanant. It’s almost provocative, we are so far from the initial text. »
For Stella Dupont, the Senate additions are “markers of the extreme right, red rags being waved.” She is already preparing how to “return to the original idea of the text” in the Assembly. Same story from Erwan Balanant: “The text arrives at our first reading, we have every legitimacy to impose our vision of the text and of this social subject. » An attitude which has the gift of annoying what we can describe as the right wing of the majority: “On one side or the other, we must stop the chin-throwing!” Of course we will have to refocus, but we have no interest in blocking such a popular text. If there were far-right red rags, would the Macronist group in the Senate have voted for it? “, asks this close friend of Gérald Darmanin. Another even asks, in veiled words, if the left wing could not put it on the back burner.
No majority, neither for one version nor for the other
A priori, This is not the direction taken. Sacha Houlié, president of the law commission, the leader of support for regularization through work, never missed an opportunity to repeat that he would go to the end of the battle. Last week, he spoke again In Le Figaro to say it again, the day after the senatorial compromise. But the left wing is exercising caution before examining the text in the Assembly, with Stella Dupont assuring that there is “a lot of work” to come.
Because it’s not just the presidential camp that votes. Everyone recognizes that there is no majority in the Assembly on the original “balanced” text. The left, while certainly favorable to article 3, never intended to vote for the text in its entirety. Some are hoping for an abstention – almost impossible – from socialists and ecologists to help them. That said, we are no longer certain that there is a majority for the version toughened by the Senate: the LRs are not hot. And then will the left wing of the majority go so far as not to vote for a text that does not suit it? It’s already difficult to estimate: there are 30 of them, maybe 40. It’s a lot, but “these are not people who follow Sacha Houlié with their finger and eye”, assures a connoisseur of the group. The MoDem, on the other hand, we know: there are 51 of them. More than enough to overturn a text that is too harsh in their eyes. And to LEFT, we hope without believing that the left wing of the majority will cross the Rubicon.
In short, no one really trusts each other. Then the question of 49.3 inevitably arises (the text is adopted without a vote, provided that a motion of censure is not adopted by the Assembly immediately). Gérald Darmanin is against and, for once, Cécile Rilhac follows him: “No parliamentarian agrees with 49.3. » The MoDem Erwan Balanant lifts a taboo: “I never thought I would say that one day, but I wonder if a good text by 49.3 is not better than a text voted on but losing our fundamentals with the LR. »
It is true that 49.3 seems less risky since the PS said it would not vote for a motion from LR on immigration, but Balanant denies “playing with motions of censure”. “There is no popular 49.3, even if the text is popular. And 49.3 can turn against you,” recalls another, more favorable to compromise. The battle for the Assembly promises to be uncertain.