Should we slow down or even stop economic immigration in France? According to a survey by the CSA institute, revealed exclusively for Europe 1, CNews and JDD, 65% of French people surveyed want to move in this direction, unlike the government which, with its bill, wants to facilitate the regularization of unemployed people. papers in professions in tension. “We still need economic immigration today,” defends Éric Woerth, Renaissance deputy for Oise and quaestor in the National Assembly, guest of the Grand Rendez-vous Europe1/CNews/Les Échos this Sunday.
“Alain Juppé, twenty years ago, was blown up because he considered that immigration was sometimes an opportunity for France. It was for a long time an opportunity for France. But too much immigration or Poorly regulated, poorly integrated immigration is obviously a risk for France,” he says. “So the idea is not to stop migratory flows. Who can think otherwise? The idea is to choose. We need economic immigration, and all the French who say ‘no, zero economic immigration’ at that time, that they do not hesitate to take the positions that are available”, annoys the MP.
Trades in tension in the balance
In the government’s initial text, article 3 – subsequently deleted in the version adopted in the Senate – proposed granting a renewable one-year residence permit to people who work in “professions in shortage” and can justify three years of presence in France as well as eight pay slips.
An article praised by Éric Woerth, which he continues to defend for the economic functioning of the country: “I see the reality, I am a pragmatist. I say that we need immigration because there are positions which the French no longer want. And it’s like that in construction, for example. We’ve never had so much need for work, particularly for ecology. And companies are having a hard time finding employees. And very often, on a construction site, there are lots of workers from immigrant backgrounds. We always need a lot of jobs that are not very qualified.”
“And we also need a France that is extremely qualified to resist the Chinese, to resist the Americans and all those who compete,” he explains. Economic immigration, but controlled immigration, insists the quaestor at Sonia Mabrouk’s microphone. “Immigration that respects the values of the Republic,” he finally concluded.