This is one of the emblematic measures of the immigration bill, adopted last December: the regularization of foreign workers in professions in shortage. Guest of the Grand Rendez-vous d’Europe 1/ CNews/ Les Echos, The Minister of Labor, Full Employment and Integration, Olivier Dussopt returned to this measure and announced that “10,000 people per year could benefit from a regularization”.
“We are talking about men and women who work and who have employment contracts, because it may seem surprising, but we have people in our country who are in an irregular situation, that is to say who do not do not have a residence permit, who do not normally have the right to be there, but who work legally. I am not talking about clandestine work, undeclared work”, explains the Minister of Labor.
“We need this workforce”
For Olivier Dussopt, the people who will be affected by this regularization are “very often people who signed their employment contract, at a time when they had a residence permit, and whose residence permit has not been renewed. And very often, too, these are men and women who work in professions with shortages.”
“We need this workforce and our objective is to allow men and women who work, who are integrated, to be regularized,” insists the Minister of Labor. “I take two examples, kitchen assistants and cleaning women and men, at the national level, 26% of jobs are occupied by non-European foreigners, while the average of jobs in France occupied by of non-Europeans, it’s 3.5%,” he explains.
2,000 to 3,000 more regularizations each year
According to the Minister of Labor, this would also “provide security to employers because often, the employers concerned do not know that their workers are in an irregular situation”.
Until now, with the Valls circular, implemented in 2012, “7,000 to 8,000 people” were regularized each year, “including in professions which are not in tension”.
Voted on December 19 in the National Assembly with 349 for and 186 against, the immigration law is currently the subject of an appeal to the Constitutional Council. The measure on professions in tension, which was debated in the Senate and resulted in a compromise between the right-wing senators and Gérald Darmanin, should not be withdrawn.