Emmanuel Macron announces that the immigration bill will be adjourned and cut

Immigration law is dead, long live immigration law. The President of the Republic announced, in his television interview, on France 2 and TF1, Wednesday March 22, that the bill “to control immigration, improve integration” would be “rearranged”. A way of confirming that its examination, scheduled for a public session in the Senate from March 28, is adjourned. “There will undoubtedly be several texts and they will arrive in several weeks”also specified Emmanuel Macron.

Also read our summary: Article reserved for our subscribers What the bill should contain

The legislative text, which it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would obtain a parliamentary majority, is the first to jump in the context of the crisis opened by the adoption of the pension reform through article 49.3 of the Constitution.

In the entourage of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, it is explained that, if things are not yet arbitrated, the “salami” text could take the form “of a bill of a few articles on what is consensual and several bills brought by parliamentarians”.

“A more technical text”

The text which was to be examined in public session in the Senate originally comprised 27 articles which augured both a reform of the asylum procedure, automatic regularization for certain undocumented workers, the lifting of protections against deportation for certain categories of foreigners in the event of a threat to public order, or even the requirement of a level of French proficiency in order to obtain a multi-year residence permit.

The new version of the text could retain only the measures on asylum and litigation for foreigners. The former create in particular a territorialization of the National Court of the Right of Asylum – today present on a single site, in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) – and generalize the hearings in single judge, to the detriment of collegial formations of judgment . They also aim to speed up the processing times for applications by reforming their registration.

As for the litigation of foreigners, the government hears the “simplify” in particular by reducing the number of procedures. By maintaining these provisions, the government wants to save the parties judged “consensual” of his project. “It would be a more technical text with less political surface”thinks Sacha Houlié, Renaissance deputy for Vienne and chairman of the law commission at the National Assembly.

Regarding the reform of foreign litigation, Gérald Darmanin has often prided himself on taking up the recommendations of the May 2022 information report on immigration, by Senator Les Républicains (LR) from the Rhône François-Noël Buffet, made at the name of the law commission. Measures listed in the government’s draft and deemed “superficial or counter-productive” by the Defender of Rights, in an opinion of February, or even “threatening the right to effective remedy for foreigners”.

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