Stuck in an avalanche of 49.3 on budgetary texts, the government is ready to negotiate for its flagship text at the end of the year, the immigration bill. One provision in particular, the creation of a specific residence permit to occupy professions in tension, tenses the right, which has a majority in the Senate. On the eve of the start of the examination of the text at the Palais du Luxembourg, the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt showed himself ready to change the system.
“I said from the start that I was very open about the form. I think that the residence permit with article 3 is a good method but if another solution emerges from the parliamentary debate, why be closed? », he explained on France 3. The two sides of the senatorial majority (right and center) refuse to agree on this article 3, which provides for a one-year renewable residence permit for workers in a situation irregular employees in sectors with labor shortages.
Non-EU foreigners occupy 3.8% of total employment
“Some senators say: ‘couldn’t we put in the law a provision allowing the prefect, always in an exceptional manner, to regularize these people without necessarily creating a new residence permit?’ », recalled Olivier Dussopt. The minister hopes to “find compromises in the Senate and the Assembly for adoption by a traditional route”, without recourse to 49.3, of the bill, criticized on the right and the left. “It is a very important political issue, an objective that we fully embrace to say that the best way to integrate into our country is through work,” he stressed.
“The objective we have is to allow people who are integrated, because they work and in difficult professions where it is difficult to recruit” to be “secure”, he insisted. “By securing them, we also secure their employers.” Around sixty professions are considered to be in tension, according to the minister, who cited industry, personal services, but also the hotel industry. In France, he recalled, non-EU foreigners occupy 3.8% of total employment.