The Senate adopted on Tuesday the abolition of State Medical Aid (AME) reserved for undocumented immigrants and is preparing to do the same on the regularization of immigrants in professions in shortage, two symbolic measures for the right which intends to toughen the immigration bill.
On the second day of the examination of this volcanic text, the upper chamber was activated in the hemicycle as in the corridors of the Luxembourg Palace. The senators not only put a serious spin on government reform in public session, but they also reached an agreement between the right and the centrists on the most tense measure, article 3 which should be deleted but several provisions of which will reappear elsewhere in the text.
These two groups, which form the senatorial majority, have until now struggled to agree on the government’s proposal, which wants to grant a one-year renewable residence permit to undocumented workers in sectors with a labor shortage. ‘artwork. They were aligned, on the other hand, with the abolition of State Medical Aid (AME), transformed into “emergency medical aid” by a large vote of 200 votes for and 136 against.
The government, divided on this issue, issued an “opinion of wisdom”, neither favorable nor unfavorable. The Minister for Health Professions Agnès Firmin Le Bodo nevertheless explained that this had “nothing to do” in the bill on immigration, paving the way for a cancellation of the measure by the National Assembly, which will in turn examine the text from December 11. “The government is very attached to the AME”, a “public health system”, declared Ms Firmin Le Bodo, who came to support for this aspect the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, omnipresent on this text.
Firmness
For more than twenty years, the AME has provided full coverage of medical and hospital costs granted to foreigners in an irregular situation present in France for at least three months. The emergency medical aid voted by the Senate, if it came into force, would be “refocused” on the management of “serious illnesses and acute pain”, as well as prophylaxis, reducing the basket of care currently granted to some 400,000 beneficiaries.
The Senate measure, vilified by the left and associations, should also allow for care related to pregnancy, vaccinations and preventive medicine examinations. The right justifies it by the risks of “draft” that according to it the AME represents, as well as its cost: around 1.2 billion euros.
In its endeavor to toughen the government’s text, already itself determined to demonstrate “firmness” on the repressive aspect, the senatorial majority also found a compromise on the latest tense measures, paving the way for adoption of the text by the Senate, during the solemn vote scheduled for Tuesday, November 14. The senatorial version “profoundly modifies the version presented by the government” and will allow “a real takeover of our migration policy”, rejoiced Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group.
“Important” agreement
“It was important that we vote on a text in the Senate, otherwise everything we would have done here would have been lost. That would have been very damaging. We make it easier for (the text) to land in the National Assembly,” added his centrist counterpart Hervé Marseille.
The right succeeded in obtaining from the centrists the deletion of article 3, subject to a compliant vote on Wednesday or Thursday in the hemicycle on this measure, in exchange for an additional article aimed at “regulating” the “power of regularization of prefects”, a demand from the centrists. “There will therefore be a regularization article for workers in tension and that is a very good thing,” underlined the Ministry of the Interior, committed to preserving the left wing of the presidential majority.
Within Hervé Marseille’s group, we refute the hypothesis of having given in to the LR, ensuring that most of the centrist demands will appear in these future additions. “Bruno Retailleau put so much pressure on him that he has to say that he won the fight. But the reality is that he swallowed his hat,” noted a centrist senator. “It’s a fool’s game,” lamented Patrick Kanner, the president of the socialist group.