PARIS (Reuters) – The Minister of the Interior and Overseas Territories, Gérald Darmanin, announced on Sunday “the end of land law” in Mayotte, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean in the grip of strong social protest against the insecurity and irregular immigration.
Roadblocks by angry residents have paralyzed the activity of this French department since January 22.
“We have come to provide answers to this important crisis, and in particular firstly answers on the migration question,” Gérald Darmanin told journalists on his arrival in Mayotte, where the new Minister Delegate for Overseas Territories, Marie, is accompanying him. Guevenoux.
“The President of the Republic has instructed me to tell the Mahorais that we are going to take a radical decision, which is the inscription of the end of land rights in Mayotte,” he said, specifying that a revision constitutional would be engaged in this sense.
“We will thus literally cut off the attractiveness that there may be in the Mahorais archipelago,” continued the minister.
“It will therefore no longer be possible to come to Mayotte irregularly or regularly, to give birth to a child here and hope to become French in this way,” he stressed, adding that this measure would be limited to the The Mahorais archipelago, faced with strong immigration from Africa and the Great Lakes, in particular.
“It is not a question of doing it for other territories of the Republic,” clarified Gérald Darmanin.
IRON CURTAIN
Soil law allows a child born on French territory to two foreign parents to automatically acquire French nationality when they turn 18.
A provision of the immigration law toughening land law in Mayotte, Guyana and Saint-Martin was censored on January 24 by the Constitutional Council on the grounds that it constituted a “legislative override”.
The Overseas Minister also announced that the future Mayotte bill would put an end to territorialized visas, which the Mahorais consider unfair.
A “territorialized” residence permit granted to Mayotte does not allow travel in the rest of French territory or in Europe, which leads to a concentration of foreigners in the archipelago.
In a video posted on X before his departure for Mayotte, Gérald Darmanin assures that the migrants grouped in a makeshift camp around the Cavani stadium, in Mamoudzou, will be evacuated.
People who have refugee status will be “repatriated to France”, those who are in an irregular situation will be sent back to their country of origin, he said.
The Minister of the Interior, who came accompanied by a reinforcement of 15 men from the GIGN, also initiated Act II of the Wuambushu police operation, launched in April 2023, against crime in the archipelago, irregular immigration and illegal settlements.
He announced the upcoming installation of “an iron curtain in the water to prevent the passage of kwassa kwassa”, Comorian fishing boats used by smugglers.
(Written by Sophie Louet)
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