The government praised the balance between deportations and integration of its immigration reform project on Tuesday, during a debate without a vote in the National Assembly where the opposition, including Les Républicains, defended it for reasons sometimes opposite.
France must be able to “say who we want” and “who we do not want” to welcome, summed up Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne by opening the debate, believing that “zero immigration is neither desirable nor possible, no more realistic than unregulated immigration is”. “This text will be balanced”, she promised, reaffirming her desire to combine “firmness” and “humanity” with this bill which must be tabled in early 2023.
Split
It includes measures aimed essentially at making deportation procedures more efficient, an equation that has plagued French migration policy for years and that the latest reform of 2018 has not been able to resolve.
The government is presenting a series of tightening measures and a “structural” reform of the asylum system in the service of speeding up procedures, as well as some measures in favor of integration.
The large gap between the two key measures symbolizes the balance sought: on the one hand the issuance of an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) as soon as an asylum application is rejected at first instance, on the other apart from the creation of a residence permit for undocumented workers in “shortage jobs”, which lack manpower.
“Mutual aid” versus “submersion”
“Too many specifically French rules prevent the expulsion of “foreign” criminals present “on our soil”, lamented the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who was whistled by La France insoumise when he quoted the historian monarchist Jacques Bainville, admired by ex-extreme right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour. The Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt wanted him to “rehabilitate work as a factor of integration”.
“Mutual aid” and “dignified welcome” for the left, “less immigration” on the right, even refusal of “submersion” on the far right: each political group then unfolded its proposals, while criticizing the government project .
The president of the National Rally deputies Marine Le Pen once again denounced immigration “out of control”. “You want more immigration in France, we want less immigration”, asserted the elected LR Pierre-Henri Dumont. “Words of infinite violence,” said Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti, recalling the journey of his Italian mother.
On the left, the leader of the LFI deputies Mathilde Panot criticized Darmanin for “hunting on the lands of the far right”. “The administrative walls that you have erected do not stop anything, they imprison in situations of lawlessness and in unworthy receptions”, accused the boss of the socialist group Boris Vallaud.
“Almost consensus”
Aurore Bergé (Renaissance) sent back to back those who want a “fortress” and those for whom “France would be the lifeline”. In her response, Elisabeth Borne distinguished the “interventions of pure posture” and “without any proposal” of the RN and LFI, and those of the parties “of the republican arc” with which she sees “a quasi-consensus” for ” better integrate those whom we welcome, in particular through work and language”.
Another debate will follow in the Senate on December 13. To achieve the absolute majority which it does not have in the Assembly, the government wants to give pledges to all sensitivities, especially on the right, without emptying the text of its substance. He is thus ready to discuss the “criteria” for the residence permit on jobs in tension, according to Darmanin, who is to receive the president of the deputies LR Olivier Marleix on December 15.
The associations denounce
On December 1, the National Assembly rejected two LR bills on the expulsion of foreign offenders. The Ministry of the Interior wants to concentrate “the effort on the perpetrators of public order disturbances”, especially since the murder in mid-October of Lola, 12, by an Algerian national under the influence of an OQTF.
“We will propose to you” to “no longer censor us and to leave it to the judge to measure whether private and family life and the right of residence are compatible with acts of serious crime”, said Darmanin. The associations supporting the exiles, gathered in front of the Palais-Bourbon, denounced a “hostile” reform and called for “an end to the discourse linking immigration and delinquency”. According to Fanélie Carrey-Conte, of La Cimade, this “umpteenth bill” will be placed under the sign of “obsession around OQTFs”.