This is the last bit of pressure, the last opportunity to show one’s discontent before the passage of the immigration law, little admired by the general public and often considered close to the ideology of the extreme right. Four days before the Constitutional Council’s decision, thousands of opponents of the immigration law demonstrated throughout France. This Sunday, there were 75,000 demonstrators, according to the Ministry of the Interior, 150,000 for the CGT and rallied throughout France to the call initially launched by 201 personalities, to put pressure on the executive, which could quickly promulgate the text voted in mid-December notably with the votes of the National Rally, except complete and surprise censorship by the Sages on January 25.
More than 160 marches were planned for Sunday, including the one in Paris between Trocadéro and Les Invalides. The police headquarters counted 16,000 participants. The CGT, 25,000. “It hurts to see that we were sold the Republican dam and that finally the government is copying the program of the National Rally,” lamented Ethan Marie, a high school student in the Paris region.
“Without us, the country would not function”
“This law is a break with French principles since 1789 for land rights and since 1945 for the universality of social protection,” explained the general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, who called for mobilization with his CFDT counterpart, Marylise Léon. Several left-wing leaders, Manon Aubry (LFI), Marine Tondelier (Ecologists), Olivier Faure (PS) and Fabien Roussel (PCF) castigated an executive “which opened the drawbridge to the ideas of the extreme right”, according to Olivier Faure, first secretary of the PS.
In the Parisian demonstration, Mady Cissé, a 59-year-old Senegalese, temporary worker in the building industry, appreciated “important support” but “also logical”. “We form one and the same society: without us, the country would not function, we are the ones who get up at 5 a.m. to go to work in the building, to take out your trash… even the prefecture offices which refuse us we clean the papers! », observed the worker who has a temporary residence permit.
A new hand extended to the far right?
The authors of the call to demonstrate, including many personalities from the world of culture such as actresses Josiane Balasko and writer Alice Zeniter, are asking Emmanuel Macron not to promulgate the law. “This law is a drift towards the extreme right, politically, and basically towards national preference,” observed former RPR minister and ex-Defender of Rights Jacques Toubon.
In question, the numerous additions by Parliament to the government’s initial text, giving a very right-wing color to a law which was initially to be based on two components, one repressive for “delinquent” foreigners, the other promoting integration. The text now includes many controversial measures, such as toughening access to social benefits, the establishment of migration quotas, or the reinstatement of the “crime of illegal residence”.
“They are such a part of everyday life”
According to the prefectures, there were 2,700 opponents in Rennes, 3,000 in Nantes, 2,500 in Bordeaux, 1,800 in Strasbourg or 3,500 in Lyon where the city’s environmentalist mayor Grégory Doucet was present. In Lille, around 2,000 people marched, led by workers from Emmaüs du Nord communities, who have been on strike for six months to denounce their working conditions and demand their regularization.
“The immigration law risks having extremely serious consequences, particularly in Marseille,” said Fathi Bouaroua, former regional director of the Abbé Pierre association, in the Marseille city. “There are many of them working in our restaurants or businesses and are such a part of daily life that it is unacceptable not to have them among us. »
Aurore Bergé brushes aside the accusations
Questioned on Sunday in the program “Political Questions” (France Inter, FranceinfoTV and Le Monde), the Minister for Gender Equality Aurore Bergé denied that the text establishes “national preference” by referring to its opponents responsibility for the rise of the RN which is currently leading the polls for the future European elections.
“Instilling the idea that we are taking up the theses and themes of the National Rally, there, for sure, we are giving them an ideological victory,” she declared. On BFMTV, the president of Reconquête, Éric Zemmour denounced a “harmful law for the French”, promising to stop all “legal immigration”.