It is a highly flammable subject. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced to senators on Wednesday that he wanted to deport more easily those who have been refused asylum. From now on, he wants foreigners in an irregular situation on the territory not to be able to multiply their appeals. He defends a new principle: automatic expulsion at the first refusal of the administration.
A rejected asylum seeker has 12 appeal options
Today, a rejected asylum seeker has 12 legal possibilities of appeal. In other words, it can take years before a rejected asylum seeker is actually deported. Gérald Darmanin’s idea is to expel all those who have been dismissed and who do not appeal, which represents just over a third of them.
In 2019, France received 133,000 asylum applications. 97,000 candidates were rejected and were subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF). Three years later, between those who appealed and those who went into hiding, the majority of them are still in France.
With the new system, based on these figures and according to the projections of Place Beauvau, 38,000 people who did not appeal could have been expelled by 2019.
Amend the law to unclog the administrative courts
The direct consequence of this desire to modify the law could be the decongestion of the administrative courts which are overwhelmed by the appeals of foreigners contesting their expulsion since it is today 40% of their activity, even 50% with appeals. In other words, the law on foreigners completely saturates administrative justice.
In the end, the foreigners who must be expelled, but who go through with the appeals, sometimes stay up to ten years in the territory, in a kind of administrative “no man’s land”, waiting to be fixed definitely on their fate.
Individuals who are not really in a regular situation and who are not totally in an irregular situation either, who settle in France, found families, and who in the end, for most of them, are never expelled .