Gérald Darmanin and his Minister Delegate for Overseas Jean-François Carenco begin a three-day trip to Mayotte on Sunday with the priority of the fight against illegal immigration on the island, the 101st French department plagued by poverty and insecurity. . This is the second overseas trip by the Minister of the Interior, since he took over the Overseas portfolio this summer, after a visit to Reunion in early July. Gérald Darmanin, who held a strong speech on immigration all summer, intends to return to Mayotte on the subject, the subject of a major debate in Parliament next fall before the presentation of a bill.
Nearly half of the population of Mayotte does not have French nationality, according to INSEE
He hopes to be able to include in this text the obligation for “one of the two parents (to be) regularly for more than a year (against three months currently, editor’s note) on the territory (of Mayotte) so that their child is recognized as French,” he said in an interview with the Sunday newspaper. This measure was already to be included in the bill specific to Mayotte aborted in early 2022 after its rejection by local elected officials. According to INSEE, almost half of the population of Mayotte does not have French nationality, but a third of foreigners were born on the island.
To fight against “the fraudulent acknowledgments of paternity” practiced, he says, by men in a regular situation for the benefit of “the children of recently arrived immigrants”, Gérald Darmanin announces that “these fathers (will have to) prove that they maintain the child for three years and no longer just two.” During his visit, the Minister must in particular be presented with the new air and sea means of combating illegal immigration and visit the administrative detention center of Pamandzi. Located in the Indian Ocean between East Africa and Madagascar, the island populated by 350,000 to 400,000 people according to the authorities, saw its population quadruple between 1985 and 2017 according to INSEE, under the combined effect of a high birth rate (more than four children per woman) and the significant emigration of inhabitants from the neighboring archipelago of the Comoros.
23,000 people deported to the border in 2021
The government highlights its figures for deportations to the border, more than 23,000 in 2021, an increase of 78% compared to 2020, a year marked by the Covid, and the increase in interceptions of “kwassas-kwassas”, boats light motorized vehicles used by Comorian migrants. Mayotte, where the average age was 23 in 2017, is struggling to integrate its youth into working life: last year, 25,000 young people aged 15 to 29 were neither in employment, nor in education, nor in training, according to INSEE, or 36% of this age group, a share three times higher than in the rest of France (13%).
The island, a regular scene of clashes between gangs or with the police, also experiences high crime rates, much higher than in mainland France, with four times as many complaints filed for burglaries and physical assaults much more frequent. Insecurity fueled by great poverty: 194,000 Mahorais, or 74% of the population, live with a standard of living below 50% of the national median, according to INSEE.