The Senate adopted, on Tuesday, November 14, by a large majority the immigration bill in a tougher version compared to that of the government, which will now submit it to the National Assembly from December 11.
Widely adopted by 210 votes to 115, the text of the law submitted to a vote in the upper house has little to do with the government’s initial version: the senators gave it a serious turn of the screw last week, with the right and its centrist allies are in action.
Darmanin, alone in charge of the reform
The reform, which was initially based on two “legs” – controlling immigration, improving integration – now leans clearly towards the repressive aspect, with a number of measures to facilitate the expulsions of “delinquent” foreigners, and simplify procedures. distancing and discourage entry into the territory. “The Senate has restored coherence to the project by toughening it and rejecting the ‘at the same time’ of the government version”, assures the president of the senators Les Républicains, Bruno Retailleau, architect of this strict hardening which worries the left as well as the associations.
“For irregular immigration, there is zero tolerance,” assumed Tuesday the LR president of the Law Commission François-Noël Buffet. “The integration aspect has completely disappeared from the text,” lamented socialist senator Marie-Pierre de La Gontrie. Now alone in charge of the reform, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, did not seem distraught by the introduction of numerous markers of the right over the course of a week of sometimes heated debates.
The tenant of Beauvau is keen on this “expulsions” aspect, in a context tense by the migratory influx in Lampedusa and the attack on Arras involving a young radicalized Russian. This would have been avoided, according to him, with this reform which will make it possible to remove most of the barriers to expulsions of foreigners threatening public order, including when they arrived in France before the age of 13.