Less than a month before the first round of the presidential elections in France, the candidates for the parties of the right and the left revealed their platforms on the issue of immigration, which was the star of the election campaign par excellence.
The proposed measures varied and oscillated between limiting the arrival of immigrants to France and welcoming them in the opposite direction. What are the details of the proposals of the seven most important contenders in the French presidential elections?
“People’s Referendum” on Immigration
If the National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen, wins the presidency on April 24, she intends to refer to a referendum on immigration issues.
Le Pen intends to present a draft constitutional and legislative law that would review all laws applicable to foreigners, as she wants to include in the constitution principles based on national priority with regard to housing and employment on the one hand, and the priority of national law over European law and international law on the other.
It also seeks to prohibit the regularization of the status of “illegal immigrants” and the expulsion of foreigners in violation of French law, with toughening criminal penalties for all accomplices of “illegal immigrants”.
Trump’s wall in Europe
Far-right candidate Eric Zemmour, in turn, wants to realize a “zero immigration” scheme by building a wall on the EU’s external borders. A measure preceded by former US President Donald Trump, who wanted in 2016 to complete the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico.
He also wants to abolish the law on the “right to land”, and “family reunification”, and will also expel foreign violators, and strip criminals with dual nationals of French citizenship with the expulsion of them. He intends to demand the suspension of the “Schengen” area, in addition to his desire to reduce the number of foreign students coming to French universities.
“The Great Replacement”
The Republican candidate, Valerie Pecres, invoked the conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement,” the replacement of citizens with immigrants. She considers that “uncontrolled immigration and failed integration can disturb the nation.” Thus, the main action it intends to take is “asylum at the border”, which requires that asylum claims go through a French embassy, and therefore it wishes to restore border controls.
She wants parliament to vote each year on immigration quotas, by profession and country, and is required to be fluent in French to obtain a residence permit. With the imposition of five years of residency to enjoy social benefits such as family allowances and housing assistance.
The rhetoric of the left camp is completely opposed to its right-wing counterpart. If the leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the “Unsubjected France” party wins the presidential elections, he will seek to regularize the status of “unregistered workers” and facilitate the acquisition of French citizenship for foreigners legally present on French soil. Abolish orthopedic tests for the ages of “unaccompanied refugee children,” allow asylum applicants to work while awaiting their response, and make a ten-year residence permit the reference.
At the European level, Melenchon talks about setting up “European civilian relief and rescue teams” at sea to avoid drownings in the Mediterranean and to allow the sea transport of migrants to England. It proposes renegotiating the “Toquette Agreements” with the United Kingdom and establishing a joint asylum office in the Calais region.
“A welcome that preserves dignity”
Socialist Anne Hidalgo, for her part, pledges to guarantee asylum seekers a “dignified welcome” in all circumstances. To achieve this, it intends to establish a balanced distribution of migrants across the territory and speed up processing times for their applications which are controlled at each stage, while committing to combating “irregular channels” and deadly “illegal immigration”. France also calls for a complete reform of the “Dublin System” to ensure the efficiency of procedures for immigrants.
European Solidarity Mechanism
For his part, Yannick Gadot of the Greens wants a European “solidarity mechanism” to ensure that member states share responsibility for asylum through better resettlement. He proposes replacing Operation Frontex – the European agency that guards the external borders of the Schengen area – “with an agency whose primary mission is rescue in the Mediterranean to avoid the drowning of thousands of migrants.”
The environmental candidate asserts in his program that he wants to come out from a security perspective by assigning the issue of immigration to a “Ministry of Solidarity”, which guarantees the access of illegal immigrants to health and housing.
Police will be required to be less active against them, arrests of minors will be prohibited, and adults will only be detained as a last resort.
“European theme”
The candidate of the “France Forward” party, Emmanuel Macron, has not yet provided precise details of his electoral platform on the immigration file, but by assessing the outcome of his term, it seems that he wants to make the problem a European issue, especially by proposing to renew the “Schengen” system. .
It also wishes to improve cooperation with the countries of origin of “illegal immigrants” to facilitate their return. In turn, he indicated that he wanted cooperation between Mediterranean countries to effectively regulate migration and facilitate the movement of those who contribute to economic, cultural and scientific exchanges.
The right is superior
Commenting on the electoral programs put forward on the issue of immigration, the French historian and specialist in the history of immigration, Pascal Blanchard, believes that the three right-wing candidates made electoral promises on the issue of immigration that they outperformed the rest of the candidates, and are competing among themselves for the “best restrictive project” regarding the issue of immigration.
He told “Sky News Arabia” that even for Macron, his position on immigration in his electoral program is still unknown, and this thorny issue remains low on the Mélenchon program.
The historian adds, “Despite the global events that have upended the scales in the past period, the issue of immigration is still a strong sign that may make the difference between the candidates. Right-wing candidates think that immigration is a major issue on which their electoral results depend. It also distinguishes them from others and positions them by making them the most restrictive and changeable.” for immigration policy.
The specialist in the history of immigration does not consider the electoral campaign that attracted this issue, but rather the right-wingers who imposed this “political differential polarity” because they ask questions about the “identity” that leads directly to the door of immigration.
“This is an essential element that continues to influence French society after thirty years of controversy.”
Pascal Blanchard says and continues, “This is not a new thing. It is a discussion of past generations, sometimes repeating itself and copying previous programmes, and sometimes it excels and excels. For example, in the 2012 and 2017 elections, the same discourse prevailed, but the difference today is that the right is stronger than it was before. Previously”.
On the other hand, the historian calls for a careful reading of the letters of Eric Zemmour and Valerie Pecres, “especially when they talk about the problem of integration, closing the borders, controlling the numbers of immigrants and the loss of identity, they do not mean the future of the country’s immigration policy, but rather those who are already on the national territory and whose integration is difficult.”
The wall… a security symbol
As for the wall proposed by Eric Zemmour, Pascal Blanchard puts it in the category of symbolism, “Many countries have chosen symbolic things in their immigration policy. Like Trump and the Mexico wall, which was his main theme in his election campaign. This is now a major element of public policies. Technically, the wall It doesn’t work for anything, but it affects public opinion and gives a sense that it is there before and after.”
He returns and presents examples in the European immigration policy that followed this approach, including the “wall of the enclave of Melilla, which Spain erected in the face of Morocco, and the immigration centers in Libya and Turkey. In a long time, the Roman Empire built a large wall that formed the borders of Europe at the time… They are solutions that symbolize the protection of Europe’s borders and give the impression to the public that they protect European civilization and culture.”
On the other hand, it is unlikely that the culture of “separation and the wall” is the preserve of Westerners, and evokes the model of the separation wall between India and Bangladesh with a length of more than 3400 km.
With regard to Melenchon’s main proposal regarding regularizing the status of “illegal immigrants”, the immigration specialist asserts that it is an old demand of about 30 years, put forward by the left and the extreme left, without anything new.
France is not a country of immigration
It seems that the right and the far right have reached a “successful mobilization” that united them and made them rise in power until today they published a “very radical vision”, according to the analysis of Pascal Blanchard because, in his words, “they went so far as to say that if France does not change its policy, it will not be the France of tomorrow.” “.
Although the voters are not technically convinced of the proposals, they like the change in vision and the creation of a new imagination aimed at saving France at any cost. Everyone knows, for example, that Zemmour’s desire to reduce the number of foreign students coming to our universities is nonsense. international and scientific research.
He concludes by saying, “Immigration continues to create controversy because France has never presented itself as a country that is proud of its history related to immigration. As is the case with the United States of America, Canada and even Germany… the French do not see their country as a big country for immigration, this is not found in their culture Nor their knowledge, and this is mainly due to the way immigration is taught to them and how its history is told. This led to the creation of a great controversy about the immigration museum, which took eight years to open.”
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