For a month now, debates on new legislation to tackle the problem of immigration have been raging in the French parliament. MPs seem to be divided over the text, which is generating heated debate and a large number of proposed amendments.
The text of the bill, which passed its first reading in the Senate on November 14, was presented at the beginning of the year, on 1 February 2023 to be precise, and provides for facilitating the regularisation of undocumented workers while increasing the scope for deportation. The bill should meet the growing demand for better control of immigration and improved integration into French society.
The bill contains twenty-seven articles which should act as a “stick and carrot” paving the way for easier regularisations of undocumented migrants who are working and not causing problems while making it easier to deport foreigners who commit offences. It also addresses the issue of speeding up the processing of asylum applications. Nevertheless, the text inspires neither the French left nor the right, with the clause providing for easier regularisation of undocumented migrants being the irritating factor.
Immigration worries
According to the Ministry of Interior, 34,000 undocumented immigrants were regularised in 2022, an increase of 8% compared with 2021. Asylum applications have also exploded, with 137,000 first applications filed in 2022, reaching the pre-Covid level of 2019.
As for deportations, there is also cause for concern. In 2022, 15,396 deportations were carried out, including 3,615 delinquent foreign nationals. The OQTF (obligation to leave French territory) enforcement rate was just 7%, which places France among the European countries with the lowest proportion of OQTFs enforced.
A survey carried out by IFOP last June showed that 82% of those polled considered immigration to be a subject “that cannot be discussed calmly in France”, while 60% said that it was impossible to take in more migrants because of the “difference in values” that “poses problems of cohabitation”.
Another poll conducted last September by Odoxa Backbone consulting for Le Figaro painted an even less cheerful picture, with 74% of respondents having a poor opinion of the Government’s actions on immigration.
It should be noted that this bill became the 30th since 1980 to respond to the migratory challenges facing France. Moreover, it becomes the 2nd since Emmanuel Macron’s arrival at the Elysée in 2017; the last bill was adopted in 2018 and aimed to “control immigration” and make “the right of asylum effective and integration successful”.
A text declared to be unsatisfactory
It’s hardly surprising that a bill of this kind provokes fierce debate, especially as the text doesn’t seem to please anyone.
On November 23, Marine Le Pen declared that she was “firmly opposed” to measures to regularise the undocumented workers in short-staffed occupations, even though this measure had already been tightened up by the Republican senators.
The subject is so electric that Jordan Bardella even gave up the debate on immigration on France 2 while learning that there would be no “duel” between him and the government representative, but a quartet comprising government spokesman Olivier Veran, the president of the Republicans Éric Ciotti, and François Ruffin of the Insoumis.
The Minister for the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, was not satisfied with the amendments made by the senators either, saying that the text “still needed to be improved”.
Some MPs even found historical arguments, going as far back as the Roman Empire. In particular, MP Antoine Léaument (LFI-NUPES) referred to the Edict of Caracalla of 212, which regularised all the free men of the Roman Empire by granting them Roman citizenship.
Another NUPES MP, Benjamin Lucas, voiced his dissatisfaction, saying that this was not a compromise, but that it would “cut even more” from the draft “the few provisions that make sense”. Or Yoann Gillet of the Rassemblement National, who reiterated the need to prohibit the right of illegal immigrants for marriage.
The bill is due to be examined by the National Assembly on 11 December, but the many amendments and compromises aimed at appeasing the divisive issue run the risk of leaving France with new legislation that is incapable of bringing about the real changes so eagerly awaited by the French people.
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