Touched flowed ? The controversial immigration bill will be divided into "several texts", announced Emmanuel Macron, and it will not be examined next week in the Senate, a victim of the crisis caused by the pension reform.
Announced for months, contested by associations for the defense of exiles, shouted down by the left and deemed very insufficient by the right and the far right, the text carried by the Ministers of the Interior Gérald Darmanin and Labor Olivier Dussopt was to be debated from Tuesday in a Senate dominated by the right-wing opposition.
But against a backdrop of political and social fever after the adoption via the 49.3 procedure of the highly contested pension reform, the executive is organizing its withdrawal on a subject deemed too abrasive to be debated immediately.
"There will indeed be an immigration law", said the President of the Republic on Wednesday during an interview on TF1 and France 2. "There will undoubtedly be several immigration texts and they will arrive in the coming weeks", he said. -he explains.
Questioned by AFP, an adviser to the executive clarified that there would be "no immigration text debated in the Senate" next week as was initially scheduled.
The government and the majority are now planning a “shorter bill and several bills”, namely texts tabled on the initiative of parliamentarians, he added.
The bill, which initially provided for a battery of measures to facilitate the expulsion of delinquent foreigners and an integration component, in particular through a controversial residence permit in shortage occupations, could be devitalized from these key elements, contested by both sides of the political spectrum.
According to an adviser to the executive, "Gérald Darmanin has proposed to put in this case other vectors which will still make it possible to have immigration measures", split "into several texts": on the one hand "a bill with consensual measures, such as the simplification of the law with a view to speeding up the processing of asylum applications, on the other, bills/parliamentary initiatives on other subjects".
Clearly, abounded another source in the entourage of the executive, "we will reorganize the bill to make it something simpler".
Even if it means turning this bill into a simple administrative reform? Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne "will propose a working method to Parliament to adopt legislative measures which are necessary to improve integration, but also to fight against irregular immigration", defended Mr. Darmanin on Wednesday during the government question time.
"We had to have a text, he cuts it into three parts: a part for the left, to massively regularize on the trades in tension - we will never vote it -, and a part undoubtedly intended for us to harden certain procedures", in addition to the tightened bill, denounced the leader of the senators LR Bruno Retailleau. "But that doesn't work. Because a migration policy is a global policy. We will never let ourselves fall into this trap," he warned.
The oppositions did not wait for the promises of cutting the text to castigate the bill on Wednesday.
"This project is totally poorly put together. I believe that it does not meet the needs of the country", tackled the boss of the LR deputies Olivier Marleix on France Inter, judging that there was "a lot of work" for "that it becomes presentable".
His counterpart from the PS group, Boris Vallaud, also criticized on Public Sénat "a text supposed to both please the right, please the left" and which, "finally (...) did not please anyone". "So if the copy is bad, let them take it back," said the deputy from Landes.
"When we see the turn of the preparatory debates on this subject in the Senate, it's wise", also welcomed on Twitter Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, president of the France Terre d'Asile association, who had participated in the consultations on the text.
Last week, the senators had considerably tightened the version of the text in the Law Commission, by adopting a series of amendments which notably joined certain historical positions of the far right, such as the tightening of the conditions for access to family reunification or even the abolition of state medical aid, reserved for undocumented migrants.
03/22/2023 19:49:24 - Paris (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
