The revolt against the immigration law is rising at the local level: the 32 left-wing departments will not apply the tightening of the conditions for payment to foreigners of the Personalized Autonomy Allowance (APA) provided for by the text adopted Tuesday by Parliament, qualified “unfair” and “ineffective”, they announced this Wednesday, December 20. “We, presidents of left-wing departments, refuse the application of the section concerning the personalized autonomy allowance (APA) of this law inspired by the extreme right, carried by an executive which claimed to embody moderation and which is now nothing more than an illustration of compromise,” they said in a statement.
“We will apply the rights and constitutional principles of our country. The City of Paris will not practice national preference for our elders with regard to personalized autonomy allowance,” the mayor of Paris had affirmed a little earlier, Anne Hidalgo, deeming the law “shameful”. “I will do everything possible to ensure that the Department is a republican shield against national preference. All the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis deserve solidarity and humanity, wherever they come from. We will continue to pay the ‘APA to foreigners in a legal situation”, also declared on
The controversial immigration law establishes a period of five years for non-European foreigners in a legal situation who do not work, and of thirty months for others, before being eligible for benefits such as family allowances or APA, paid to people aged 60 or over who are losing their independence. APA payments represented an amount of 6.38 million euros in 2021, according to figures communicated to AFP by the Départements de France association.
“Ideas of Vichy”
Shortly before, the Lot department had been the first to oppose the new APA payment terms. “The Department of Lot, faithful to its values of solidarity, refuses and will refuse to apply the principle of national preference for our elders,” said Serge Rigal (DVG, ex-PS), president of the departmental council, in a press release. which proposes to “create a new universal autonomy allowance which will give exactly the same rights to Lotois who would be excluded by this law”. According to Lot, article 19 of the immigration law, voted definitively on Tuesday, “establishes the principle of national preference” for the APA.
In an internal email addressed to agents of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, of which AFP was aware, Stéphane Troussel denounced a “law of fear, hatred and exclusion (…) which draws a border in law between French people and foreigners in a legal situation. “This is why the Department will continue to pay its benefits under the same conditions as today, to all the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis, whatever their origin or nationality,” he said. detailed.
The PS president of the Gironde departmental council, Jean-Luc Gleyze, estimated that “we are touching on a France which risks seeing the ideas of Vichy return, whitewashed”. “Here we are in a situation where we must no longer only guarantee universal rights, but first fight to protect them from dangerous electoral, financial and/or xenophobic logics,” he said in a statement sent to the ‘AFP.
The executive strove this Wednesday to deny any crisis within the Macronist majority despite the deep unease, the resignation of a minister and the divisions generated by the adoption in Parliament of the controversial law on immigration, with the votes of the RN, which considers itself ideologically the winner of the sequence.