The text submitted to the vote no longer has much to do with the bill presented by the government, which praised the balance between a repressive component, intended to facilitate the expulsions of delinquent foreigners, and an integration component.
The Senate considerably toughened it with emblematic measures of the right, at the end of a week of bitter debates. “The Senate text represents a change in nature. We have been seeing restrictive policies on migration for 40 years. This is something else, both in the measures adopted and the tone of the debates” , worries Pascal Brice, the influential president of the Federation of Solidarity Actors (FAS), which brings together 870 associations and organizations.
The words of Senator Stéphane Ravier (Reconquest), who for example declared during a speech on land law that “a calf born in a stable will never make it a horse”, particularly marked the spirits.
“Stigmatization”
An “outburst” which pushed the FAS to send missives to the centrist and RDPI senators until the last minute to dissuade them from voting for the text. “They must take stock of what they are about to do: do they accept this shift towards general stigmatization” of foreigners, asks the former diplomat.
At the end of a week of debate, which notably saw the flagship measure for the regularization of undocumented workers in professions in shortage being reduced to a bare minimum, “we have a broken back”, summarizes Mody Diawara, president of the collective of undocumented immigrants from Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis).
“Article 3 (deleted then replaced by a more restrictive one, editor’s note) we already found that it was harsh. They find that it’s too lax. It’s beyond me. What they want is that we continue to work, to pay taxes, but we do not benefit from the fruits of our work and we remain irregular”, believes this construction worker who had been invited to the Senate to follow the examination of the law.
Another measure removed: state medical aid (AME), reserved for undocumented immigrants, replaced by “emergency medical aid” with a restricted basket of care. “We are devastated. It marks a regression on something fundamental,” observes Christian Reboul, migration referent at Médecins du monde.
It will be necessary to “block” the National Assembly, which will in turn examine the text from December 11, he said. Even if the damage is done, judges Christian Reboul, for whom these “ideas have had time to spread” in public opinion.
“Steamroller”
The reform of the AME aroused incomprehension even within the government, which nevertheless did not formally oppose its abolition in the hemicycle. “We are waiting for clarification from the government. We need to know if there is a pilot on the plane,” worries Delphine Rouilleault, general director of France Terre d’Asile.
In the Senate, “we took a steamroller to the face,” she admits. Tightening of the criteria for family reunification, tightening of land law, conditioning of family allowances and housing assistance (APL) for foreigners to five years of residence, policy of annual migratory “quotas”, possibility of placing an applicant for asylum in detention… The upper house adopted a general turn of the screw.
“It’s a festival of horrors. The search at all costs for an agreement with the Republicans does not explain the adoption of an extremely negative legislative development, which will above all lead to the ‘disintegration’ of foreigners”, fumes the head of the state operating association.
According to her, there is “absolute unanimity” among the associations, “scandalized by the xenophobic undercurrent” of certain measures. In this regard, the AME or the article on regularizations are only a “smoke screen”, analyzes Delphine Rouilleault: “It has been explained to us for a year that the repressive measures targeted delinquent foreigners. We realize that in reality, it concerns everyone.”