Immigration law: “This text ratifies into law what was considered a deviation”

Tightening of family reunification, reinstatement of the crime of illegal residence, abolition of the land law… On Tuesday 19 December, the immigration bill, rejected a week earlier by deputies, was adopted in a severe version, welcomed by the Grouping National.

Interview with me Élodie Journeau, lawyer in asylum and refugee law.

To miss. Cimade, like other associations defending the rights of foreigners, yes reported a text by law that would be “the most repressive and mistreatment developed over the last 40 years in the immigration sector. For what ?

Elodie Journeau. The very serious thing is that this text incorporates into the law practices that were considered a deviation. This is a step backwards: we are reinstating, for example, the crime of illegal residence, which had been revoked because it was believed that the irregular situation could not constitute a crime. The law already allowed undocumented people to be punished by sending them home. Now we give the authorities the right to issue fines. It’s a double punishment. Then, we will exacerbate discrimination at multiple levels, particularly at the critical point of APL. All of this fits into a debate about national preference: the idea that money, when there is any, should go to the French.

Furthermore, for the asylum application, they generalized the principle of the single judge, removing any specificity from this procedure as if it were any migration procedure.

In France we have the essential principle of collegiality, which allows us to make solid decisions. On a legal level, this creates a new discrimination between the French who continue to benefit from this principle of collegiality in many matters and effectively have the time to organize their defense, compared to foreign asylum seekers pressed by unsustainable deadlines. By generalizing the single judge, an accelerated procedure is generalized. Even if half of asylum seekers do not have access to accommodation with social workers and do not necessarily have access to an interpreter, we will ask them to go even faster, to find the means to quickly translate the stories in which they have suffered terribly. things.

It is a text that attacks fundamental rights to limit at all costs the number of people arriving on French territory. As explained in the columns of François Héran, director of the Migration and Society chair of the Collège de France, people fantasize about the number of foreigners present in France, in particular the number of foreigners who would not come from Western countries. They have the impression that immigration and asylum demand have exploded disproportionately in recent years, while they are growing at a completely stable pace in all countries around the world. Likewise, we are also increasing the number of French students studying abroad, for example.

Last September, a public health investigation revealed the terrifying link between migration and sexual violence. It shows, for example, that female asylum seekers are 18 times more likely to be victims of rape than French women. How will the immigration law impact them?

If we stigmatize undocumented people and reintroduce the crime of illegal residence, then a woman victim of domestic violence, or sexual violence, in an irregular situation, will think twice before filing a complaint. And indeed, if we refuse to take responsibility for the housing and shelter of people in an irregular situation, then, inevitably, the most vulnerable people will be the first to be affected. And this will be especially true for these women.

Why was the text passed to the Joint Committee before being adopted by the Assembly?

This process is perfectly legal. When a parliamentary debate takes place and a bill is rejected, as happened last week with a motion to reject it, it is entirely possible to refer the matter to a joint committee. Being able to continue discussing, but in a smaller committee. The target ? Reach a compromise which will then be put to the vote.

The question, in this context, is rather knowing what to retain from the government’s absolute will to approve a text that is not at all essential. It is this inflexibility that makes the moderates (therefore the centre-right, the centrists, the centre-left) say that in this text we support the ideas of the far right since those who persist the most are precisely the far right. The 88 FN deputies voted in the same direction. This text would never have passed if there had not been so much insistence from the right. So, even though we are in a perfectly democratic and legal process, there was no doubt about whether it was useful or not and whether, precisely, we were not carrying forward the RN program while Emmanuel Macron had promised to block it.

Marine Le Pen also spoke of an “ideological victory” for her party…

Mr. Darmanin continues to say that they didn’t need the RN to win [un argument depuis mis à mal par un recomptage des voix, ndlr], but in fact Marine Le Pen says very precisely that this text was approved thanks to the RN. We can therefore hope that Macron will draw the necessary conclusions. The executive had said that he would not have promulgated the text if it had been voted on thanks to the RN.

What are the next steps before applying the text?

Technically it was adopted. All that remains is the promulgation of the law, as well as the implementing decrees. There are probably a number of measures for which we will find that they are inapplicable. For some simply, because from an administrative point of view it is not feasible.

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