A bill on asylum and immigration will be tabled "from the beginning of 2023", Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday.
"We have a policy that is both inefficient and inhumane, inefficient because we find ourselves with more foreigners in an irregular situation than many of our neighbors, inhumane because this pressure means that they are too often badly received" , he posed as a statement in front of the prefects.
Among the factors of attractiveness of France, "we have a system of monetary, social, medical aid, much more generous than all our neighbors", he noted.
On the reception side, the Head of State deemed it necessary to "integrate much faster and much better those who even have a provisional title by language and by work", noted the Head of State.
However, according to him, “our policy today is absurd” because it “consists of putting women and men who arrive, who are in the greatest misery” in the poorest neighborhoods.
The Head of State pleaded for a better distribution of foreigners welcomed on the territory, in particular in "rural areas, which are losing population", and where "we will have to close classes, probably schools and colleges”.
In these regions, "the conditions for their reception will be much better than if we put them in areas that are already densely populated, with a concentration of massive economic and social problems", he argued, also referring to a policy “faster learning of French, investment in vocational training”.
"Changing the rules"
At the same time, Emmanuel Macron promised to "improve the effectiveness of deportation policies" at the border for foreigners in an illegal situation.
In particular, he mentioned the need to make the granting of visas more conditional on "the spirit of cooperation to take back foreigners in an irregular situation, starting with those who disturb public order".
During his recent trip to Algeria, Emmanuel Macron thus paved the way, with his counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune, for a relaxation of the visa regime granted to this country, in exchange for increased cooperation from Algiers in the fight against illegal immigration.
Thursday before the prefects, he finally focused on “two territories which will be the subject of very special attention”, Guyana and Mayotte, where “it will undoubtedly be necessary (…) to change the rules very forcefully because the geographical and demographic reality of these territories is profoundly different from the rest of the soil of the republic”.
In Mayotte, where the law of the soil has already been toughened in 2018, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced during a trip to the island at the end of August that he wanted to further toughen access to French nationality.
A “great debate” in the fall
The minister also stepped up to the plate several times on immigration in the middle of the summer, defending his intention to legislate to facilitate the expulsion of foreigners convicted of offenses and assuming a form of “double punishment”.
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He then hoped to have his immigration bill examined by Parliament at the start of the school year, before the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, imposed the holding in the fall of a "major debate" on the subject, postponing for several months the examination of the bill, which had been described by some observers as a "reframing" of the Minister of the Interior.