Didier Leschi, head of the French Office for Immigration and Integration, says he is in favor of the residence permit being conditional on a minimum level of language, while Emmanuel Macron wants a new law on asylum.
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“We must be more rigorous with regard to the teaching of the French language”, pleaded on Friday September 16 on franceinfo Didier Leschi, director of the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII), while Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday September 15 that a bill on asylum would be deposit “from the beginning of 2023“, evoking a current policy “absurd, inefficient and inhumane“. According to the president, the current organization “consists in putting women and men who arrive, who are in the greatest miseryin the poorest neighborhoods.
franceinfo: Do you share Emmanuel Macron’s observation?
Didier Leschi : We are well aware that there is a difficulty today, in particular in terms of integration and distribution of the reception burden. This is what the President of the Republic wanted to recall. In terms of integration, there is the subject of language: we must undoubtedly be much more rigorous with regard to the teaching of French.
Do we need more resources for this?
There are already many means that are given. I remind you that the French Immigration Office gives free up to 600 hours of lessons for people who obtain a residence permit. Many associations are subsidized by the state to do so. But I believe that the subject is also to do as other countries do which are often presented as a model in terms of integration, such as Germany, Austria or others: that is ie linking the residence permit to access to a minimum level of language. There is a reflection to be had to encourage much more the learning of French. And it’s not so much a question of resources.
How to organize a “better territorial distribution”?
This is an important issue since our country has the characteristic of having a poor distribution of the burden of welcoming immigration. For example, we must avoid a concentration on Ile-de-France, where we unfortunately have an accumulation of “poverty on poverty”, as Emmanuel Macron says. We must succeed in showing the advantages of being in medium-sized towns, where all the social and school systems, as well as public services are more within reach. Contrary to these current situations where we sometimes have school classes where the number of students who do not speak French is so large that it compromises the chances of success for some of the children.