Some want to see in it the exacerbated symbol of the immigration problems that France is experiencing. Others, a simple particular situation inherited from colonial history. Still, Mayotte, off the Comoros and Madagascar, is experiencing a migration crisis for the nth time which is destabilizing the whole island.
Tuesday, a vast operation of expulsion of the illegal immigrants prepared for two months was to start when a court suspended the destruction of the sheet metal boxes and the expulsion of the inhabitants of the shantytown Talus 2, located in the district of Majicavo, in the commune of Koungou. The judge considered “irregular” the destruction of the houses which, he said, “endangered the safety” of the inhabitants. He also asks for measures to relocate and store their belongings in a safe place.
This judgment, which the prefect appealed, suspends the expulsion of a few thousand Comorians out of the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who literally overwhelm this island in the Indian Ocean. baptized Wuambashu, which means “recovery” in Mahorais, the operation was to be the largest ever attempted in Mayotte, according to the Ministry of the Interior. With the reinforcement of 500 police officers from mainland France (for a total of some 1,800 police officers and gendarmes on the spot), the aim was to demolish a thousand sheet metal huts, out of the 30,000 which accommodate illegal immigrants, to rehouse those who have their papers in order and to dismiss the others. Last year, 26,000 Comorians were repatriated in this way.
“The objective is that there are no more slums in Mayotte”, explained the prefect Thierry Suquet, who heads a department where the public services are no longer sufficient for the task. If the operation raised the disapproval of NGOs, such as the League of Human Rights, it is widely supported by village collectives, elected officials and deputies of Mayotte.
A paradise turned into a hell
With its mountainous relief, its forests and its exceptional seabed, this island remained French in 1976, while the rest of the Comoros chose independence at more than 90%, Mayotte is a real paradise located 8000 kilometers from the metropolis. A paradise that has become a hell for a population of barely 310,000 inhabitants, almost half of whom would now be illegal. Every day sees dozens of Comorians arriving on the Mahoran coasts on fishing boats called kwassa-kwassa. Since the beginning of the year, more than 200 have been intercepted from the island of Anjouan, located barely 70 kilometers away.
With an average salary of 1,500 euros per month, Mayotte may be the poorest department in France, but it remains an island of wealth in an even poorer archipelago. Half of that in mainland France, the average salary in Mayotte is ten times higher than that of the Comoros, not counting social benefits, of which France is a world champion. When the island became a French department (2011) and was integrated into the European Union (2014), the gap with the Comoros widened further. Comorian women do everything to give birth in Mayotte, where land law allows them, as the mother of a French child, to obtain a residence permit. Migration is all the more massive in that many Comorians have family in Mayotte, that similar languages are spoken there, that the same Sunni Islam is practiced there and that the Comoros have never recognized the independence of the island.
While the population doubled in 20 years, poverty reached 77% of the population and acts of delinquency multiplied by 11. In a report dated November 2021, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies describes a “delinquency extraordinary” and an insecurity that “far exceeds all the standards of mainland France or other overseas departments and regions”.
“People come down from the favelas to terrorize the population”, explained to the Figaro MP LR Mansour Kamardine. The island may expel 25,000 Comorians each year, but nothing works. Many of them come back. Even France’s commitment to provide the Comoros with development aid of 50 million euros per year has not moved things. “The differences in wealth between the two territories are too strong to curb the migratory flows”, declared to The cross the geographer Fahad Idaroussi Tsimanda.
The “magnified” state
Tuesday, while the courts blocked the operation Wuambashu, the Comoros refused to allow a Mahoran boat bringing migrants back to the Comoros to dock. “As long as the French side decides to do things unilaterally, […] no deportee will return to a port under Comorian sovereignty,” said Comorian Interior Minister Fakridine Mahamoud. A statement which, according to most observers, aims to raise the stakes and lead to obtaining, in exchange for border control, more money from France. While the Comoros are about to enter the electoral campaign, France remains the main provider of funds and humanitarian aid to the archipelago, despite the growing influence of China and Saudi Arabia.
Many are those who consider today that the decision to make Mayotte the 101e French department is one of the causes of this chaos. It was however approved by 95% by the Mahorais during a referendum held in 2009. Some, like the Minister of the Interior Michèle Alliot-Marie, had launched the alert. “Switching to a system of benefits or wages equivalent to that of France would be irresponsible, she said. The whole economic and social system would collapse, not to mention the immigration that would follow. It looks like we’re there.
Admittedly, the law on the acquisition of French nationality has been slightly modified, on the initiative, moreover, of a senator from Mayotte. It now requires one of the two parents to be in a regular situation for at least three months for a newborn to obtain French nationality. A period that the Minister of the Interior Gérard Darmanin wants to extend to one year. But the measure is insufficient, according to the former Secretary General of the Ministry of Immigration Patrick Stefanini, who declared to the Figaro that “as long as we do not radically change the laws on the granting of residence permits and on the acquisition of nationality, we cannot improve the situation. Mayotte is a real suction pump in the region”.
In Mayotte, the inhabitants have a word for these “tinkerings” of the law intended to limit the damage. It is the “magnégné” state. 8,000 kilometers away, part of the political class suspects the Minister of the Interior of taking advantage of the situation to promote his candidacy for the post of Prime Minister or the succession of Emmanuel Macron in four years. On the left, we see it rather as the laboratory of a “violent, inhuman and unworthy policy”, in the words of the environmentalist MEP Damien Carême.
” The last chance “
The Mahoran deputy Estelle Youssoufa, of the parliamentary group Freedoms, independents, overseas and territories, considers on the contrary that this initiative is “the last chance to restore order and security”. Last year, the candidate of the National Rally Marine Le Pen obtained in Mayotte her best result (43%) in the first round of the presidential election, all departments combined. This is what Didier Leschi, director general of the French Office for Immigration and Integration, recalled on France Culture. According to him, the opponents of this operation hold “a discourse of the haves”, which is no longer audible today. They ask those who are already deprived to be even “more welcoming to those who are more deprived than themselves”.
Justice will say if the operation Wuambashu will eventually take place. But it will not put an end to the debate, which goes far beyond the single island of Mayotte. Especially when Emmanuel Macron has just postponed once again, probably in the fall, his immigration bill.