Alexandre Chauveau / Photo credits: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
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8:17 a.m., November 6, 2023
The immigration bill is debated starting this Monday in the Senate. The text aims to facilitate the expulsions of foreigners in an irregular situation, but also, this is the famous article 3, to regularize illegal immigrants hired in so-called shortage professions.
Starting this Monday, the immigration bill will be debated in the Senate. A text which aims to facilitate the expulsions of foreigners in an irregular situation and to regularize illegal immigrants hired in so-called shortage professions. The right, with a majority in the Senate, made the withdrawal of this measure an essential prerequisite for discussing the rest of the text.
The long months of negotiations have still not come to fruition. The right has made it a red line. “It will be the signal sent to the whole world that France, ultimately, always ends up regularizing those who have defrauded its borders. So it is a prerequisite that we cannot give at the same time the signal that we want to expel more and at the same time that we would like to regularize more and more”, explains Bruno Retailleau, president of the LR group in the Senate.
Debates at the beginning of December
The fact remains that the right will have to come to an agreement with its centrist allies, who are more favorable to this regularization measure. Gérald Darmanin says he is ready to negotiate as much as necessary to reach a compromise.
Beyond this measure, the Republicans will seek to amend the text to, among other things, facilitate expulsions, restrict the terms of state medical aid or even tighten the conditions for family reunification. So many measures that go in the right direction for the senatorial right, even if, according to them, only a constitutional reform would be really effective in regaining control of immigration. A bill to this effect will be debated in the upper house at the beginning of December.