The Les Républicains group wants to change the Constitution so that the rules on immigration change drastically. But not only that.
The immigration law is the government’s major reform text at the end of the year. This Thursday, it is the Republicans who are initiating the debates with their parliamentary niche, devoted to a text considered by the group as more necessary than the executive’s project: a proposed constitutional law “relating to the sovereignty of France, nationality, immigration and asylum”. It has little chance of being voted on in the Assembly, but allows it to send a message a few days before the examination of the government’s immigration law in the Hemicycle.
This wishes to integrate into the supreme norm of the Republic that “no one can rely on their origin or their religion to evade the laws of the Republic and exempt themselves from common rules”, and intends to give “to the French people the freedom to pronounce, by referendum, on any bill or draft organic law”, by broadening “the scope of matters covered by Article 11 of the Constitution”, including the subject of immigration. This text also includes an article noting that France is within its rights if it deviates from international law on migration issues in the name of “the interests of the Nation”.
The text of the law, carried by the president of the LR, Eric Ciotti, also includes an article aimed at making the principle of “assimilation” “constitutional”. The head of the right-wing party considers that action must be taken so that “all avenues of access to French nationality, and not only that of naturalization, are now subject” to the desire “to assimilate into the community French”, giving as concrete and much vaguer examples “sufficient knowledge of the French language, history, culture and society, of the rights and duties conferred by French nationality, as well as adherence to the principles and essential values of our Republic”.
Another proposal in this text is to establish the principle of annual quotas: “Give Parliament the power to set by law, each year, the maximum number of entry authorizations with a view to staying in France and first stay authorizations in France issued to foreign nationals, with the exception of European nationals and people seeking asylum”.
LR also proposes another text: a resolution to end the agreement between Algeria and Paris, dating from 1968, which created a single status for Algerian nationals in terms of movement, stay and employment in France.