The acting president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella opposed Wednesday Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to better distribute the foreigners received in France, accusing him of wanting to “punish rurality” and called for a referendum on the subject. “I don’t want French villages to look like Seine-Saint-Denis or Porte de la Chapelle”, denounced on franceinfo the one who is a candidate to officially take over from Marine Le Pen in November.
According to him, the President of the Republic “wants to punish rurality because distributing immigration in the countryside and in French villages is also to distribute the problems that result from it: the problems of insecurity, the problems of communitarianism , the problems of changing our ways of life”. “What is the common point between a Sudanese and an inhabitant of a village in Creuse?”, he wondered.
“Referendum on the question of immigration”
“Today the French, in all the opinion polls, do not want additional immigration, so I suggest that he organize a referendum on the question of immigration and ask the French if they wish to intensify the flows in the villages and in the French countryside,” he said.
“I invite the government to organize a referendum on the question of immigration from the beginning of 2023 before this bill,” he insisted.
“Good solution”
By announcing on September 15 a bill on asylum and immigration “from the beginning of 2023”, Emmanuel Macron pleaded for a better distribution of the foreigners received, in particular in “rural areas, which are losing the population” and where “we will have to close classes, presumably schools and colleges”.
In these regions, estimated the Head of State, “the conditions for their reception will be much better than if we put them in areas which are already densely populated, with a concentration of massive economic and social problems”. It is a “good solution” which should make it possible to “break up the ghettos”, said Tuesday the boss of the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii) Didier Leschi.