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The government announced at the end of September the tightening of the conditions for obtaining visas with regard to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia because of the “refusal” of these countries to issue the consular passes necessary for the return of immigrants returned from France.
“Since the health crisis, we have had blockages with several countries, especially with the Maghreb countries”, Gabriel Attal said Wednesday, November 10 on franceinfo, concerning the issuance of consular passes allowing the return of people, staying illegally on French territory, in their country of origin. “Diplomatic exchanges were not sufficient“, to solve this problem, the government has put in place, “a month ago”, a measure aimed at restricting the granting of visas to nationals of these countries.
“Reducing visas is a difficult measure but we accept it as long as there is not a more important cooperation”, commented the government spokesperson. It allowed, according to Gabriel Attal, the recovery “diplomatic discussions at a very high level”. “We have started to have results with Tunisia, we have consular passes that have been issued, several dozen, even several hundred since this announcement”, he assured, acknowledging however that “it remains complicated with Algeria and Morocco”. “But there is a diplomatic work which continues”, he added.
“What is our objective? It is simply to enforce our migration rules”, said Gabriel Attal. “This means that people who are intended to be welcomed in France, because they are persecuted in their country, because they benefit from asylum, are fully integrated, but for people who do not have a vocation to remain in France, they must be expelled and returned to their country of origin “, he continued.