Postponed several times, the examination of the new immigration bill begins this Monday in the Senate. For Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, this is the start of the trial by fire on a controversial text with high political stakes.
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It is the senators who will set the tone. The text first passes through the upper house where the right and the center are in the majority, but do not agree on article 3. The latter proposes the regularization of undocumented immigrants in professions in tension, such as construction. , catering, agriculture or home help. Under certain conditions: be in France for three years and have worked at least eight months in one of these sectors.
This is one of the hot spots in the text. The centrists want it to be rewritten, the Republicans want it to be deleted, denouncing a “draft” for irregular immigration. And Gérald Darmanin will try to smooth things over to emerge from the debate in the Senate with an amended text, but voted on.
Puzzle for Darmanin
Because it is him, Gérald Darmanin who is expected around the corner. The Minister of the Interior has continued to say that his texts do not go through 49.3, to show his determination to find the mouse hole of compromise. Between the LRs who made the maintenance of article 3 a casus belli and the left wing of the majority which refuses to see it disappear from the law.
A headache for Gérald Darmanin in which Emmanuel Macron chose to interfere by letting it be known a few hours before the start of the examination of the text that he planned to extend the referendum to social issues. And therefore to immigration, as requested by the LR but also the RN. A boost to his minister, or a lure for the right.
Limit regularizations and strengthen OQTFs
Among the objectives of this law, there is also the idea of limiting the number of regularizations with, in the crosshairs, family reunification. In committee, the Senators have already tightened the conditions: wait two years and no longer a year and a half before submitting a request. And upon their arrival, family members must master a minimum of the French language.
Another concern of the bill is to strengthen the execution of obligations to leave French territory, the OQTF. Article 10 of the text will make it possible to lift protections against people who represent a serious threat to public order.
Among my colleagues, I have not seen a Frenchman. Those who are the workforce at work are immigrants. We have to give them papers, because they are still working!
Immigration law: the testimony of undocumented workers in the construction industry, a sector in tension