Solving a Rubik’s Cube in the dark is not easy. Elisabeth Borne is attempting an even more delicate task: finding a majority on the immigration bill, a text repeatedly postponed by the executive due to lack of agreement with Les Républicains (LR). The right indeed rejects the creation of a residence permit allowing the regularization of illegal immigrants exercising a “job in tension”, which it equates to a call for air to illegal immigration. The left wing of the majority mirrors this device, a symbol of Macronist pragmatism. “To date, there is no majority to vote for the text,” summarizes a pillar of the government.
Matignon intends to take charge of the matter. Elisabeth Borne, who has planned to meet the party leaders and the presidents of the groups in the Assembly in the coming days to discuss several issues and inevitably this one, will meet in particular with Eric Ciotti and Olivier Marleix. The Prime Minister is attached to the “jobs in tension” system, but fears its assimilation to a massive regularization operation. She criticizes the text, in its current version, for suggesting too much automaticity in the issuance of papers. The project grants a “full right” residence permit to foreigners who have resided for at least three years in France and have been working in a job in tension for at least eight months over the last two years.
Legislative development at a minimum
The Prime Minister is considering at least a legislative change. A circular issued in 2012 by Manuel Valls already provides for the possible regularization of undocumented workers. The application for a residence permit must be submitted jointly by the foreigner and his employer. The executive, however, noted that some business leaders are not taking any steps to regularize their foreign employees in order to keep a cheap workforce. Elisabeth Borne’s idea: to modify the law to allow an employee alone to make this request, then entrusts a regulation with setting the criteria for its validity.
This intermediate solution aims to find common ground between the right and the left wing of Renaissance. “Between Sacha Houlié [le président de la commission des Lois de l’Assemblée] and Bruno Retailleau, each must take a step towards the other, we hear at Matignon. Everyone can be reasonable and find a point of balance.” Elisabeth Borne is making a fuss here, as she is caught between two fires. The right does not want to hear about legislative developments, the left wing of the majority is keen to vote on the labor pillar of the text. “The majority is very keen that this is not regulatory but legislative,” summarizes a minister at the forefront of the subject.
In his eyes, Article 3 is the symbol of original Macronism. A residue of excess in a five-year term anchored to the right. The President of the Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, recalled on Sunday her attachment to the system, when Sacha Houlié made it a “red line”. “This title is an element of identity,” notes someone close to Gérald Darmanin. “If we completely remove the trades in tension, we will have a problem of line and readability, abounds a minister from the left. We presented this as a text at the same time Darmanin-Dussopt. And removing this point does he guarantee for so much a majority?”
Totem against red cloth
The right, however, will be difficult to convince. Anxious to differentiate herself from Emmanuel Macron with a view to 2027, she intends to make the article the symbol of the sovereign errors of the Head of State. A minister is tearing his hair out: “We are talking about people who have regular and undisguised employment. 8 or 9 times out of 10, these people signed an employment contract even though they had a residence permit which did not have then not renewed. These are not people who entered France illegally.”
Elisabeth Borne knows how much public opinion is looking for firmness. No question of undergoing this damned trial for laxity educated since 2017! The Prime Minister intends to assure Eric Ciotti and Olivier Marleix that the residence permit will only concern “a few thousand” people, far from the imprudent declarations of ministers estimating it at several tens of thousands. Touching naivety. One regularized foreigner is always one too many for LR!
Inflexible LR. In the majority, we start dreaming of a deal with the left. She is in favor of article 3, and the repressive aspect of the text essentially concerns foreign offenders. As revealed Opinion, Macronist and Nupes deputies have been meeting for several weeks near the National Assembly, under the leadership of Pascal Brice, president of the Federation of Society Actors and former director of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Offra). A column co-signed by Renaissance and Nupes deputies in favor of foreigners’ access to work should be published in the coming days.
To obtain a majority in the Assembly, Sacha Houlié has been relying for months on the abstention of certain opposition deputies rather than on massive support from LR. But the help from the left will not be free. “It is not a question of making short work of Darmanin who is reaching out to the right and the extreme right, warns the boss of the PS deputies, Boris Vallaud. On this subject we cannot do something at the same time . The principles cannot be cut in two. We cannot say ‘I am going to regularize undocumented workers’ and ‘I am going to touch the AME.’ Here is Darmanin’s name put back at the heart of the game. The adoption of the text would be a major victory for the ambitious Minister of the Interior, whom the left loathes. What if one red rag replaced another?