Alexandre Chauveau // Photo credit: Ludovic MARIN / AFP
The asylum and immigration bill has arrived in the Senate. Unsurprisingly, article 3, which provides for the regularization of undocumented immigrants in professions under pressure, puts the nerves of the majority and the opposition to the test. However, from the opening of the debates, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, said he was ready to dialogue.
An article that does not suit the boss of the Republicans
“The text proposed by the government is open to discussion to build together a firm, fair and above all effective text,” he declared before the senators. Because the standoff between the Minister of the Interior and the senatorial right is intense. At issue is Article 3, which Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate, still does not want to hear about.
“It is a tremendous capitulation to go looking for cheap labor. As I speak to you, there are more than a million young people who are neither in employment nor in school. 1 .9 million French people who are on the RSA and 3 million who are unemployed. What do we do with them?”, annoys the boss of the right at the Luxembourg Palace.
Towards a rewriting of article 3?
In the meantime, negotiations between the government and the majority in the Senate are still ongoing. With, in the role of mediator, the Centrists, allies of the Republicans in the upper house. Hervé Marseille’s group is pleading in particular for a rewriting of article three which could satisfy both parties. Gérard Larcher would not be opposed to it.
And to allow time to reach a compromise, article three could only be debated at the end of the week, at the request of the government.