France is in the process of passing a new immigration law that will restrict the rights of immigrants, namely tightening residency measures in France and the grounds for possible deportation.
The text put to the vote in the French Assembly on Tuesday was approved by a Joint Committee (CMP) of seven deputies and seven senators after months of debate.
The Senate approved the bill, which resulted from the agreement between the presidential majority and the right, with 214 votes in favor and 114 against. The bill has now been sent to the National Assembly, which is expected to vote on it on Tuesday evening. -honestly. President Emmanuel Macron’s party largely voted in favor in the Senate, alongside Les Républicains and the centrists, while the three left-wing parties were in opposition.
Macron promised to withhold the legislative changes if the CMP text were rejected by parliament.
Marine Le Pen of Rassemblement National is already celebrating “an ideological victory, as the ‘national priority’ is now enshrined in this law,” a phrase used by the French far right for decades.
“Today it is the Republicans who, thanks to their work and thanks to their ideas, are imposing this text,” said Eric Ciotti, president of the Les Republicains party.
The French left has already expressed its outrage. “There is a new de facto majority on the migration issue, an extreme right-wing majority,” Socialist Party Secretary General Olivier Faure emphasized.
The bill changes the conditions for immigrants’ access to non-contributory social benefits and access to personal housing assistance and limits access to the residence permit for “sick foreigners” and to state medical assistance and the regularization of residence in France. Foreign students, refugees and resident card holders are not covered by these new rules
There are also plans to introduce immigration quotas, as well as an annual parliamentary debate on migration.
As regards the possibility of loss of nationality, this now includes dual nationality holders convicted of voluntary murder of a person representing a public authority.
The bill also restores the status of “crime of illegal stay”, punishable by a fine without detention, and prohibits the detention of minor foreigners.
Source: DN
