France wants to make it easier to deport migrants

France wants to facilitate the deportation of migrants without a residence permit and at the same time make it easier to hire foreign workers in sectors with a shortage of staff. "There is more hardship, (...) but also initiatives for regularization," Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt told the newspaper "Le Monde" (Wednesday edition).

France asked 122,000 migrants to leave the country last year. Only 17,000 of them left the country as part of a voluntary return or because they were deported. The low number of people leaving the country without a residence permit had become an issue in France in recent weeks after an Algerian woman who should have left the country was accused of killing a twelve-year-old.

"In the future, we will register all migrants with an exit order as wanted persons," Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin announced in "Le Monde". This would make it easier to track which of them actually left France. “The prefect should make life impossible for them and ensure, for example, that they receive neither social benefits nor social housing. We're shifting into a harder gear," Darmanin said. He also wanted to limit the opportunities to appeal.

The basic ban on deportation for migrants who were younger than 13 when they arrived is said to be overturned. In the future, judges will decide on a case-by-case basis.

Asylum procedures are also to be further accelerated. “It sometimes takes two years before a person becomes deportable. That gives her time to find undeclared work and possibly have children," Darmanin said. The minister regretted that there were tens of thousands who were difficult to deport, even though they actually had a notice to leave the country. "We must not allow time for rights to arise that contradict the prefecture's legal decisions," Darmanin said.

Labor Minister Dussopt, for his part, announced a new residence permit for sectors with a shortage of staff. "It's about posts that are already occupied by undocumented migrants," Dussopt emphasized when addressing the right-wing populists of the Rassemblement National (RN), who are calling for French people to be given preference in principle when jobs are allocated.

Right-wing and right-wing populist opposition politicians immediately criticized the proposals as too liberal and announced that they would vote against them. "It amounts to mass regularization, that would be crazy," said Congressman Aurélien Pradié, who is running for the Conservative Republican party leadership. MEP Jean-Philippe Tanguy from the right-wing populist RN called for training “French unemployed” to be better than hiring migrants.

The bill is scheduled to be debated in the National Assembly in early 2023. President Emmanuel Macron only introduced an immigration law in 2019 that was intended to speed up the asylum process. Since Marine Le Pen's RN formed the largest opposition faction in the National Assembly in April, the issue of immigration has received increased attention.