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Seine-Saint-Denis: the impossible regularization of undocumented high school students

2020-07-09T19:57:16.487Z


Since 2018, it has been impossible for them to obtain an appointment at the prefecture - which is now done online - to regularize their


It's banging your head against the wall. An invisible wall, impalpable, certainly, but which makes it even more impenetrable.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, a hundred undocumented students, just over 18, are deadlocked, waiting for a residence permit issued by the prefecture, an essential step to continue their studies or find a first job.

But time passes and nothing comes. For a very simple reason: these young people can't even get an appointment at the prefecture! “Since 2018, appointments have been made on the Internet. It started with a good intention - to end the endless queues in the prefecture - but it does not work, assures Dominique Margot, of Cimade Ile-de-France, who had organized in its premises, in Paris, a press conference to request an emergency plan for these students. When they send their request, they always get the same response: service unavailable. "

The silence of the administration

Without an appointment, it is therefore impossible for the prefecture to initiate the procedure for obtaining a residence permit. “It's absurd, prevails Dominique Margot. Because, in addition, their request is quite feasible. They are good, motivated students who want to work a lot in catering or construction, sectors which need manpower. In addition, the government itself has declared that it wants to help these undocumented students. In a press release published in May, on the deconfinement strategy and the protection of children, the Secretary of State for Solidarity and Health, Aurélien Taquet, wrote that no pupil should be expelled from school because than undocumented. "

An opinion shared by the host of human rights associations and education trade union organizations (FSU, Snes, LDH, MRAP, etc.), also mobilized. But they demand action. For this, they signed a column published on June 17 in "Liberation", signed by 800 education staff from Seine-Saint-Denis, in which they condemn the "silence of the administration". Contacted, the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture did not respond to our requests either.

Associations hope for the support of elected officials

Now, the associations are asking for an emergency plan so that the issue can be resolved at the start of the September school year. “We are going to contact the elected officials of 93 in the coming days so that they can put pressure on the prefect. And then we are counting on a national movement because everywhere in France the problem arises, "points out Emmanuel Zemmour, education in economic and social sciences at the Pavillons-sous-Bois, one of the first to have taken action on the issue.

Will this be enough to bring the Prefect out of his silence? In any case, Bakary * hopes so, but the 18-year-old is tired of waiting. He has been trying to get an appointment request for nine months. “I sometimes get up in the middle of the night to make a request but it doesn't work. What am I going to become ? I'm starting to despair. "

"When I arrived in Paris, I slept on the street"

However, this student in CAP tiling at the Claude Nicolas Ledoux high school, at the Pavillons-sous-Bois, has guts and tenacious hope. In November 2016, he left his family in Ivory Coast, bound for France. A year later, he arrived in Paris after crossing Niger, Burkina Faso, Libya, the Mediterranean and then Italy. “It was a lot of suffering. With 52 other people, we walked for a week in the desert. I never thought I would get out alive. And then I went to prison in Libya. When I arrived in Paris, I managed as best I could, I slept on the street, I finally called my father in the country and he gave me the contact of a friend of his who lived in Pantin. "

The young man, who still lives in the same city, therefore has thick leather but, today, the mind is affected. "At night I have nightmares. Sometimes, I don't even sleep at all, I worry, I am afraid that I will be sent back to Ivory Coast. "At 18, an undocumented migrant can now, by law, be expelled from French territory at any time if he has not initiated the regularization of his situation," confirms Emmanuel Zemmour. This is what happened to Fadil, an undocumented Cameroonian high school student from Montreuil, detained in a detention center since May 28 and an identity check in Paris and who is obliged to leave the territory. (OQTF).

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What will Bakary do if we send him back home? “I imagine myself again in the Niger desert. It scares me, but I'll come back. "

* The first name has been changed.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2020-07-09

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