WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #344 - Immigration law, A shit project in a shit country (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In the government's drawers for months, the immigration law carried by

Darmanin comes out of the Senate loaded with amendments straight out of
the far-right program, voted with the support of elected officials from
the presidential party. Faced with these racist attacks against exiles
and undocumented immigrants, mobilizations are being organized. ---- The
bill to "control immigration, improve integration" or Darmanin law, will
soon be examined by the Assembly after amendment by the Senate on
November 14. This bill, "the toughest and firmest of the last thirty
years" in the words of its designer, was nevertheless initially
described even in certain left-wing media as a balance between
regularization of undocumented workers and firmness towards offenders.
To simplify, you have to "be mean to the bad and nice to the good," says
the Minister of the Interior.

The new law plans to automatically impose an OQTF[1]on asylum seekers
whose application is rejected at first instance. In the event of
rejection, they could until now appeal to the CNDA, a court composed of
two judges and an expert. This collegiality made it possible, in theory,
to take the time for a serious interview with them.

The reform aims to reduce the jury to a single judge and generalize
videoconferencing of hearings. Faced with more than ten cases per day,
we can fear that this single judge will simply ratify the rejection of
the asylum request pronounced by the OFPRA[2]. Alongside this law, the
government intends to provide itself with the means to expel people
targeted by an OQTF. It increases the capacity of existing
administrative detention centers (Mesnil-Amelot) and builds new ones
(Mérignac) to reach 3,000 additional places by 2027.

False pledges given to reformists
The guarantee offered to the left was the elimination of the six-month
waiting period during which asylum seekers could not work (i.e. the
theoretical duration of the examination of their application). The
problem being that in this case, after having been put to work for six
months, a large number would then be deported if their asylum
application was rejected. The other promise was the creation of a
specific residence permit for workers in "stressed" trades, renewable
each year on the condition that their sector still faces a shortage of
labor. It is therefore in no way an opening but an ersatz of the work
visa which would guarantee a residence permit for three years.

At the end of the confinements, a large number of halted construction
sites resumed, requiring a significant workforce. However, thousands of
undocumented workers, tired of the exploitation to which they are
subject, have turned to self-entrepreneurship and in particular
delivery. It turns out that under pressure from the government, 2,500
undocumented delivery men and women were fired by Deliveroo in September
2022. A large number found themselves without resources and referred to
so-called "shortage" professions. with the promise of (provisional)
regularization. With the passage of this measure, if the demand for
workers on construction sites, in kitchens and in maintenance services
were to decrease, the State would have every opportunity to expel those
who kept the country's economy going. arm length.

A project modeled on the RN program
However, even these measures which served the interests of undocumented
workers less than those of their bosses were removed after passing the
Senate. The senatorial center and right then, by means of a battery of
amendments, reoriented this already disastrous reform to model it on the
deadly program of the RN on immigration. These measures include: the
establishment of migration quotas, the tightening of family
reunification and access to residence permits for family reasons, the
creation of new cases of refusal to issue a residence permit, the
conditioning of obtaining from a first student residence permit to a
deposit, the transformation of State medical aid (AME) into emergency
medical aid only, the conditioning of social benefits to five years of
certified residence in the territory or even the reinstatement of the
"crime of illegal residence".

The Senate designed a racist reform but in continuity with government
policy. The AME and CMU were abolished in Mayotte in 2005 in a colonial
approach, with overseas territories often serving as a place for social
experimentation before extending this type of measure to the rest of the
country. The Senate's amendments would allow the generalization of this
abolition of the AME, despite the recent alert of a collective of 3,000
caregivers on the health risks generated by this measure. There is every
reason to be concerned that other practices experimented overseas will
be extended throughout the country.

Concerning foreign students, they have been bearing the brunt of
discriminatory measures for a long time now. Tenfold increase in tuition
fees for non-European students in 2019, suspension of visas in September
of this year for Malian, Nigerien and Burkinabe students. Everything is
done to discourage nationals of former colonies from studying in France,
based on the racist prejudice that they are not real students.

A long-term mobilization
Even before this aberrant accumulation of amendments intended to make
life ever more impossible for undocumented people in the territory, the
collectives and union sections of undocumented workers supported by
support organizations were not mistaken. and mobilized against the
Asylum & Immigration bill. The Solidarity March has been leading a
campaign of rallies and demonstrations intended to protest against this
project for a year. A wave of coordinated strikes affected 33 brands on
October 17, including the occupation of the Arena construction site by
hundreds of strikers and their supporters, the most important
construction site of the Olympics on which many undocumented workers
work. These struggles obtained a regularization procedure for the site's
strikers and demonstrated that legislative and police relentlessness are
far from having overcome the determination and solidarity of the
activists. This mobilization has not stopped and aims to reopen the
physical counters for submitting residence permit applications in the
prefecture.

We can fear that the focus on the question of the AME will serve as
leverage for Darmanin to negotiate the passage of his project. The
demonstrations declared on December 18 and the other mobilizations
organized between now and then throughout France at the call of more
than 200 organizations[3]must be massively rallied by our political camp
if we want to be able to obtain wholesale rejection. of this project.
Papers for everyone! NOW!

UCL Anti-Racism Commission

To validate

[1]Obligation to leave French territory

[2]French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons.

[3]See the agenda on the Antiracisme-solidarite.org website.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Un-projet-de-merde-dans-un-pays-de-merde
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