French President Emmanuel Macron will appeal to the French Constitutional Court to verify whether the new immigration law is legal and respects fundamental rights. The law was adopted on Tuesday night in the National Assembly with votes in favor of the traditional right, the extreme right and a majority of deputies who support Macron. But a quarter of Macronists voted against or abstained. The president is now trying to quell the rebellion. It will not be easy. The Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, has already announced that he will resign. Others, located in the social democratic wing of the Government, have threatened to do so as well.
The left and a part of Macronism consider that the law breaks the principle of equality for residents of France and, even more seriously, it assumes without saying one of the totems of the extreme right, the so-called national preference. That is, the priority for French people over foreigners, even if they have the necessary residence and work permits, when accessing the robust French social protection system. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right in France and aspiring to succeed Macron in the Elysée, celebrated the adoption of the text as an “ideological victory” for her party, the National Rally.
In an interview with the France Inter radio station, Macron's Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, admitted this Wednesday that there are unconstitutional elements in the law. “Yes, I confirm it,” she responded when the interviewers asked her if that was the case. But that was not an obstacle to referring to Tuesday's vote: “I have the feeling of having accomplished my duty.”
The version adopted is not the one Borne and Macron originally wanted, more balanced between repressive and progressive measures. But, lacking an absolute majority in the National Assembly, they needed the votes of the opposition. And they ended up agreeing on a harsher and more right-wing version of the text with the right-wing Republicans, the majority in the Senate. The Constitutional Council, equivalent to a constitutional court, could annul some articles and soften the law again.
Land law
Critics denounce that the law questions fundamental principles of the Republic. One of them is that in France the nationality of a citizen does not depend on his origins, but on the place where he was born, according to the tradition of the so-called right of the soil, as opposed to the right of blood. Until now, a child of foreigners automatically became French at the age of 18. Now he will have to ask for it. The idea is that whoever wants to be French, expresses their will to be so, without it being automatic.
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Another criticism points to the obligation for foreign students to deposit a deposit when they come to study in France. It is a measure, inspired by the right, that seeks to prevent people who want to immigrate to France from enrolling in universities to obtain a visa, and then not going to class. The rectors of the universities denounced in a statement that this measure “goes against the multi-secular tradition of openness to the world of the French university” and “is an insult to the Enlightenment.”
The most controversial measure is the one that toughens the conditions so that foreigners, even if they have a work and residence permit, receive family or housing assistance. That this establishes a difference between the French and foreigners is what leads critics to say that Macron has adopted national preference, a concept until now toxic to most parties except the far right.
The progressive newspaper Le Mondein an editorial, laments: “Since forty years ago, the French political debate adopted the issue of immigration, rarely has a government expressed such a degree of commitment to forces that thrive by designating the foreigner as a scapegoat.” For The Figarothe political crisis is the result of the “denial [por parte de Macron] of his lack of an absolute majority in the Assembly, which exposes him to the shifting sands of the oppositions, and of the denial, above all, of the central place that immigration occupies in the French evil. The conservative newspaper believes that the president tried for too long to please both the left and the right, and did not understand that, on the issue of immigration, public opinion leans to the right.
Macron plans to give explanations in an interview this afternoon at 7:00 p.m. with the public broadcaster France 5. In a meeting he held on Tuesday at the Elysée with the parliamentary leaders who support him, he said that his objective in adopting the law was to defend the interest general of the French, maintaining the unity of the majority and of the country, according to a source who participated in the meeting and requested anonymity.
Of the six or seven ministers who threatened to resign if the text was adopted, only one has confirmed it in public. “I don't give leftist or moral lessons to anyone,” he told Le Monde the head of Health, Rousseau. “I clinically confirm that it is not possible for me to explain this text.” This minister belongs, like the other discontents, to the social democratic wing of the Government. He was also chief of staff of the prime minister, also from the social democracy.
One of the effects of the law may be the breakdown of the balance between the different currents of Macronism, a movement that sought to be transversal and bring together moderates from the left and the right. The crisis has left deep wounds. They will take time to close.
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