Darmanin wants immigrant workers to be able to request their regularization themselves

The announcement was made during a hearing of the National Assembly’s law commission. This Tuesday, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, proposed a legislative change so that migrant workers can request their regularization themselves, also acknowledging during a parliamentary hearing the “administrative absurdity” that this foreign workforce faces.

“It doesn’t seem normal to me that only the employer can request the regularization of the person who works for him,” Gérald Darmanin declared before the deputies, to whom he presented his roadmap on security and migration issues.

“It is a balance of power that is not positive for the employee. If we change the law, it will be a good thing,” he added, while a bill on asylum and immigration is due in January.

Without collective regularization

Trade unions and defenders of foreigners have long demanded a reform of regularization procedures so that employers are not the only ones able to file these files, which creates a relationship of dependency and subordination between the worker and his boss.

The Minister of the Interior pointed out, before the justice commission, the “little consideration that certain employers have with the immigrant personnel they hire.”

“We have to improve (…) the integration of people who work on the soil of the Republic and who are subject to administrative nonsense by the administrative operation of the Ministry of the Interior,” he also acknowledged.

However, Gérald Darmanin ruled out the possibility of a “collective regularization”, preferring the case-by-case study of “individual regularizations”.

“My line, which I carry in the (next) migratory text, is that we be tough with people who are foreigners (criminals) and that we can regularize and help those who want to work and respect the laws of the Republic,” he said. he said she.

Announcing that a bill on asylum and immigration will be presented in early 2023, President Emmanuel Macron explained last week that he wanted to put an end to an “absurd policy” that he considered “ineffective and inhumane”.