The Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt defended on Sunday the establishment of a new residence permit for so-called shortage professions, an article of the immigration bill which is opposed by part of the right, while saying he was “open to the form” that this provision can take.
“I said from the start that I was very open about the form. I think that the residence permit with article 3 is a good method but if another solution emerges from the parliamentary debate, why be closed? », he explained on France 3, on the eve of the start of the examination of the text in the Senate.
Both sides of the senatorial majority (right and center) refuse to agree on this article 3, which provides a one-year renewable residence permit for workers in an irregular situation employed in sectors with labor shortages.
“Some senators say: couldn’t we put in the law a provision allowing the prefect, always exceptionally, to regularize these people without necessarily creating a new residence permit? », recalled Mr. Dussopt.
“An important political issue”
The minister hopes to “find compromises in the Senate and the Assembly for adoption by a traditional route”, without recourse to 49.3, of the bill, criticized on the right and the left. “It is a very important political issue, an objective that we fully embrace to say that the best way to integrate into our country is through work,” he stressed.
“The objective we have is to allow people who are integrated, because they work and in difficult professions where it is difficult to recruit” to be “secure”, he insisted. “By securing them, we also secure their employers.”
Around sixty professions are considered to be in tension, according to the minister, who cited industry, personal services, but also the hotel industry. In France, he recalled, non-EU foreigners occupy 3.8% of total employment.
“When we look certain professions such as kitchen assistants, we are above 25%it is the demonstration that in these professions, if there were no foreign workers, it would obviously be very difficult,” he noted, specifying that the granting of a residence permit via article 3 could concern “a few thousand people per year, 7 to 8,000 people per year”.