Immigration: favorable to the bill, the French want to toughen its content

Postponed several times, the immigration bill will be debated on November 6 in the Senate before its examination in the National Assembly in December. More than three quarters of French people (78%) say they are “favorable” to the text carried by the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, as revealed by the latest Odoxa-Backbone Consulting survey for Le Figaro.

While the standoff continues between the right and the executive, LR supporters (78%) also view the government's project favorably. Eric Ciotti's troops have been demanding for several months the deletion of article 3 - which provides for the regularization of undocumented workers in professions in shortage -, without which they will not vote on the text. More than half of LR voters (55%) nevertheless favor this measure, as do the majority of respondents (56%).

However, it is towards more repressive provisions, proposed by the right, that eyes are turning. These are those which meet the broadest support, whether it is the reestablishment of the offense of illegal residence for foreigners concerned by an OQTF (82%), the tightening of the conditions of family reunification (80%), the definition of immigration quotas by Parliament (78%), the obligation of asylum seekers to make their request for reception in their country of origin or in a third country (74%), or even the removal of State Medical Aid for Emergency Medical Aid (69%).

More than seven in ten French people (71%) also support a recurring demand from the right and nationalists: to modify the Constitution to be able to organize a referendum on immigration. The majority of them (67%) therefore do not want a forceful passage through the National Assembly with the adoption of the text through article 49.3. However, the option remains on the table of the executive, which has not yet managed to secure a sufficient base of votes at the Palais Bourbon to pass its bill.

While the Republican benches are raising the threat of a motion of censure, the French would have a narrow majority (52%) to oppose it. Even left-wing supporters (60%) do not want to see the government fall on this text.