MEven if it were – which is probable – partially invalidated by the Constitutional Council, the bill relating to immigration adopted on December 19, in particular the provisions establishing “national preference”, will mark with a black stone this five-year term and our political and social history. Indeed, the support given by the majority of parliamentarians to articles excluding, for a long period, foreigners from the benefit of family and social benefits is not only a serious political and ethical fault, but an aberration of public policy.
As it stands, the text provides that foreign populations in a legal situation will not have the right to receive either family benefits or personalized autonomy allowance for a period of thirty months for those who work, and five years for those who do not work – the latter also being excluded from benefiting from housing assistance. However, these allowances allow adults who are working or looking for work to help their children or loved ones with disabilities “survive”.
They have the authorization to be on the territory, but how will they live there with dignity without these supplements? In so-called “stressed” sectors, such as social assistance, construction or even catering, salaries are low and do not allow families to get by. For immigrant women, often alone, who occupy almost all jobs in the medical-social sector, it is not possible to survive without help for the children.
These populations, which France nevertheless needs, will therefore be precarious, with the temptation of an undeclared complementary activity. Prey to networks of delinquency and trafficking, they can be tempted by community withdrawal, or even separatism.
Unprecedented regression
To this is added, in purely administrative terms, the improbable and heavy bureaucracy to be put in place to carry out the “sorting” between immigrants, to count the different delays according to the different statuses – and these are not the hypothetical savings on undistributed social benefits which will compensate for the costs incurred. While the bill is notably titled “improving integration”, these counterproductive measures will not achieve the objective it has set for itself. In terms of the effectiveness of public policies, this is an aberration.
But there is worse: these measures will legally and politically confirm the idea that the foreigner, because he is not French, is a second-class extra-community citizen who is not entitled to family benefits, whereas he is in a regular situation and respects the laws of our country. These benefits are, however, historically based on the principle of universality, precisely because French family policy, designed in the France of General de Gaulle, did not distinguish, in the rights of the family, and in particular of the child, the origins of fortune or provenance. Unprecedented regression: this is the first time that France will carry out sorting on such a scale based on origins.
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