Laura Laplaud
modified to
9:24 a.m., December 18, 2023
A joint committee meets this Monday to decide the fate of the immigration bill. Two solutions: bury it or reach a common version. In the second case, the text would then be submitted to a vote by the National Assembly and the Senate on Tuesday. Guest of the Great Europe 1-CNews interview on Monday, Sébastien Chenu, vice-president of the National Assembly, denounced “tinkering”.
“All they want is to be able to say: we did something”
“We have the feeling that these deputies from different parties don’t really know where they are going, don’t really know what to do in terms of migration policy. It’s a tinkering to try, in the end, to give birth of a text. All they want is to be able to say: we have done something. Simply, when we don’t have a clear mind, when we don’t know where we are going, when we are considering, like the Macronists, immigration as a project, in the end, there is little chance that all this will give a very convincing result”, declared the National Rally MP from the North.
“Any unconditional aid, and this is the case with the AME, gives rise to abuse”
After the vote on a motion of rejection last week, thus putting an end to the debates in the National Assembly, the government chose to pass the text to the Joint Joint Commission to arrive at a text which will satisfy both the Republicans ( LR) and the presidential majority. Since Wednesday, negotiations have been going well and certain compromise points already seem to be emerging.
The right and the executive seem to have agreed on State Medical Aid (AME). The text should return in a separate bill on the issue in January 2024. For Sébastien Chenu, “any unconditional aid, and this is the case with the AME, gives rise to abuse”. “We therefore consider that it must be replaced by emergency medical aid which would be geared towards life-threatening emergencies and epidemics,” he said. The senators’ text planned to transform this AME into Emergency Medical Aid (AMU).
“A text that changes nothing, that settles nothing”
The regularization of certain undocumented workers in professions in shortage remains in the bill but the president of the Republicans, Éric Ciotti, said he expected from the government a “new wording” of the article which guarantees the fact that it does not opens “no legal rights for people who request it”.
The government would also have given its agreement to include a measure of forfeiture of nationality for dual nationals perpetrators of crimes against the police. The question of social benefits paid to foreigners in a legal situation is also on the table and the executive would have agreed to impose three years of residence instead of five to be able to benefit from allowances such as personalized housing assistance (APL) or family allowances.
Measures which do not convince the vice-president of the National Rally. “We do not want a text which does not protect the French and which is not up to the level of the challenge before us. The migratory challenge which faces us is enormous. And to send signals which would be signals of weakness, tinkering, procrastination to finally obtain at the release a text which changes nothing, which resolves nothing, it is going backwards”, he assured at the microphone of Europe 1-CNews.
“From the moment we say to people who are at the ends of the earth: come, you will have rights, it’s a step backwards,” he said.