“The intention is not to make air calls.” Asked on France Inter about the immigration bill on Monday, November 6, the Prime Minister defended article 3 of this text, which provides for granting a temporary residence permit to workers in an irregular situation in professions in shortage. “It’s about allowing people who have been in our territory for years, well integrated, to be able to be regularized,” she continued, defending a “common sense measure, widely shared”. This article is contested by LR parliamentarians, and should be at the heart of the debates which open Monday at 4 p.m. in the Senate. The leaders of the Republicans have established this article as “Red line” and threaten to table a motion of censure if the presidential camp were to draw a 49.3 to have the text adopted.
Senators have one week to vote or not on this bill before the National Assembly takes over from the end of November. Follow the debates in our live stream.
The CFDT wants to go further in regularizations. “There must be an article 3”but “it is not enough”, estimated on France Inter Marylise Léon, the general secretary of the CFDT. She pleads in particular for the residence permit granted to workers in sectors in tension to be valid for longer than one year, a period “extremely short”.
Unions and associations are concerned about a challenge to land rights. In a letter signed by around sixty people and organizations, trade union centers, presidents of associations and even academics asked Elisabeth Borne on Monday to remove amendments to the immigration bill which “call into question the rights of the soil” for children born in France to foreign parents. They point to articles 2 bis and 2 ter of the text, introduced in March by the Senate Law Committee. The authors call on the government to “table amendments to delete these provisions which would send us back to Napoleonic times” and denounce measures which resume “antiphons of the extreme right”.
Elisabeth Borne opposes a “suppression of the AME”. Unlike the Minister of the Interior, Élisabeth Borne “is not favorable” to the disappearance of State Medical Aid, demanded by the Republicans in exchange for support for the bill. “We should not make decisions based on totems”, believes the Prime Minister, pointing out “an issue of humanity” And “public health”, for foreigners living in France “but also for all of our fellow citizens.”
• A text that aims to be balanced. This bill includes a repressive component for “be tough with delinquent foreigners” and one “integration section” For “people who work”, in the words of Gérald Darmanin. “The government’s line is to be tough on the bad guys and be nice to the good guys”, summed up the Minister of the Interior a few months ago. Clearly, a very Macronist “at the same time”, which runs the risk, in a situation of relative majority, of displeasing both the right and the left.
Uncertainty hovers in the Senate. Examination of the text by the Senate had in fact already begun: the bill was adopted in committee on March 15. But its study was interrupted after the adoption of the pension reform. The senators will therefore resume their debates directly in public session, Monday, on a version of the text already strengthened by the senatorial majority of the right and the center. LR senators are not completely aligned with their centrist allies, although they are essential to building a majority.