A few thousand people demonstrated this Sunday in Paris to demand rights for undocumented migrants and to express their opposition to Minister Gérald Darmanin’s future immigration bill, noted an AFP journalist. Behind a head banner proclaiming “Wherever we come from, wherever we were born, our country is called solidarity”, the demonstrators, including undocumented migrants and activists responding to the call of several collectives of undocumented migrants, aid associations or trade unions (CGT and Solidaires), marched between the Porte de la Chapelle and the Place de la République, where they arrived at the start of the afternoon .
“We tell Gérald Darmanin (Minister of the Interior) that we are not delinquents. We are workers”, proclaimed an activist in the procession organized on the occasion of International Migrants Day, every 18 December. “We need a lasting and broad regularization of undocumented migrants,” Isabelle Enjalbert, president of Cimade Ile-de-France, told AFP. However, the Darmanin bill provides for “minimum regularization, only in so-called tension sectors, among which there is not even catering!”, She said. The text, which must be tabled in early 2023, provides for the creation of a residence permit for undocumented workers in “short-term occupations”, which lack a workforce.
Status of slavery
“I want to have papers”, said in the procession Cintia, a Nigerian who has worked as a waitress in France since 2011. A few meters further, Oumou, originally from Côte d’Ivoire since 2012, said she obtained papers in 2020 but denounced “the difficulty in having them renewed”. “Undocumented migrants work, are often with their families, with school children. As they have no papers, they are often in a situation of almost slavery or exploitation in their professional activity. is not dealt with by the bill, which responds solely to security aims”, judged Isabelle Enjalbert.
The “jobs in tension” residence permit provided for by the government will be a renewable annual permit, if the job is “still in tension”. “We work here, we live here, we stay here,” read one banner. “Without papers, in danger, we are not dangerous”, “housing for all”, chanted several demonstrators.