The immigration bill continues to divide. Around ten elected officials from the majority co-signed with the left a platform in favor of the regularization of undocumented workers in professions “in tension”, in order to avoid unraveling of the text under pressure from the LR. This is one of the most sensitive measures of the bill which has been postponed many times but which Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin now announces will be examined in the Senate from November 6 and in the Assembly in early 2024.
Article 3 of the government text provides for the granting of a residence permit to foreigners working illegally in sectors such as construction or hospitality, with a labor shortage. The right and far right are fiercely opposed to it, denouncing a “call for air” for irregular immigration. The government hopes to find a way through, in the absence of an absolute majority in the Assembly. Will he have to adjust the measure?
Go through a circular rather than a law? Knowing that the more than 30,000 regularizations per year are already carried out through the “Valls” circular. Or once again draw the constitutional weapon of 49.3 to pass the text without a vote?
Gérald Darmanin assures that the “two parts” of the bill will be presented to Parliament: a repressive part to “be tough with delinquent foreigners” and an “integration part” for “people who work”. On the left wing of the macronie, we defend this second part at all costs. Around ten deputies from the presidential camp, including the president of the Laws Commission Sacha Houlié (Renaissance), co-signed a column, on the front page of Libération, with socialists, communists, ecologists and Liot, to defend this “humanist project” in the face of “collective hypocrisy.”
The 35 signatory parliamentarians, including the boss of the Communist Party Fabien Roussel or the leader of the socialist group Boris Vallaud, demand the regularization of undocumented workers who operate “entire sections” of the economy, in “sectors in tension such as construction, hotels and restaurants, cleanliness, handling, personal assistance”.
Behind the scenes, the former CGT unionist Marilyne Poulain and the former director of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) Pascal Brice, now president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (Fas) and local elected PS , have been encouraging these discussions for several months. “Exchanges continued this summer” for “convergences” on “immigrants’ access to work,” says Pascal Brice.
Government spokesperson Olivier Véran, for his part, recalled on Tuesday that “the entire majority” defended the regularization aspect of undocumented immigrants in professions in tension, thus minimizing the platform of the Macronist left wing on the subject. “You have part of the majority who say “we care about this measure”. Alright. It turns out that the entire majority supports this measure, it is the one which allows foreigners who work in our country, who have already been there for a while, who have a salary and who can support their family, to ask themselves to be regularized when they are irregular,” the minister declared on CNews-Europe1.
On the left, only the LFI deputies did not wish to be associated with this forum. “We contest the idea of ??regularization only for professions in tension. We risk creating disposable immigration at the hands of companies,” considers Insoumis Andy Kerbrat, interviewed by AFP. “If LFI does not sign it is because they want to go further, but we also want to go further,” assures PS number 1 Olivier Faure. And “that does not mean that we will vote for the Darmanin law”, underlines the president of the socialist deputies Boris Vallaud.
In the presidential majority, MoDem deputy and vice-president of the Assembly Élodie Jacquier-Laforge signed because she has “feedback from business leaders. In Isère, we have this need for labor immigration. The head of the centrist party François Bayrou also considers this measure “useful and fair”. But the head of the MoDem nevertheless calls on the government not to force itself on the subject: “I do not believe that the question of immigration is today adapted to 49.3,” he told Le Parisien.
Traveling to the MoDem parliamentary days, in Vienne, Gérald Darmanin did not rule out going through the “regulatory” route, while considering it necessary to include in the law the fact that the request for a residence permit can be the initiative of the sole employee. The Valls circular of November 2012 allowing regularization of workers now provides that this is a joint request from the employer and the employee. Gérald Darmanin also left the door open to an extension of the duration of presence in the territory required for applicants. “We say people who have been there for three years, it could be five or seven years, that would already be a lot of people. »
