On the eve of the examination of the text by deputies and senators in the joint committee (CMP), they were keen to reiterate their opposition to the immigration bill. Leaders of the CFDT and the CGT, leaders of associations fighting precariousness or defending the rights of foreigners, academics, are asking Emmanuel Macron this Sunday for the withdrawal of the immigration bill, an “indelible stain on our republican principles” . The signatories “solemnly ask the President of the Republic not to give in to this spiral of escalating proposals that undermine people’s fundamental rights.”
Unions but also the leaders of Cimade, the Abbé-Pierre Foundation, the LDH, France Terre d’Asile, Uniopss (social sector associations), as well as François Héran, professor at the Collège de France, and Camille Schmoll (research director at EHESS). The latter judge that the measures which serve as a basis for the CMP, resulting from the text voted by the Senate, “infringe many of our republican principles, in terms of unconditional access to care or housing, respect for dignity, refusal to endorse logics of national preference”.
A “bad wind” in France and Europe
The signatories consider as so many “compromises” or “bargaining” measures such as the conditioning of social benefits on five years of legal presence in France, the reinstatement of the offense of illegal residence, the abolition of State medical aid ( AME), the tightening of access to residence permits or even the promise to increase expulsions.
Denouncing the “bad wind” in France and Europe, the “growing poison of hatred and rejection of others”, the signatories judge that “the only viable outcome today is to withdraw this bill”. “We are at a serious moment for foreign people and for our country. Until the end, you must be able to challenge. What is at stake here are things fundamental to our republican principles,” summarizes Fanélie Carrey-Conte, general secretary of Cimade.