This is a turn of the screw that the government considers "acceptable". On Wednesday night, the Senate approved a tightening of the most emblematic part of the immigration bill, concerning regularization in jobs in short supply. At the heart of the examination of a text mainly focused on immigration control and the simplification of procedures for the expulsion of delinquent foreigners, this mechanism for the integration of immigrants through work has been the focus of debates for months... And the upper chamber did not escape the ambient tension, at the end of an evening of invective during the session.
On the strength of an agreement negotiated at the last minute between the two sides of its right-wing and centre-right majority under the approving eye of the government, the Senate abolished the executive's initial measure and immediately replaced it with its own limited mechanism. Gone is Article 3, which allowed the granting of a residence permit "by right" to undocumented workers in sectors with a labour shortage. Popular with the left wing of the presidential camp, the measure has been set up as a red line by Les Républicains, who see it as an "automatic right" and fear a "draught".
For Retailleau, "it's a political victory"
Now it's time for Article 4 bis, which provides for a residence permit granted by prefects "on a case-by-case basis" and "exceptionally" in these sectors of activity, in a "strictly regulated procedure" and subject to multiple conditions, including respect for the "values of the Republic". "It's a political victory," the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, told Public Senate on Thursday morning. "If we lose this battle, we roll out the red carpet for Marine Le Pen," he added.
The compromise reached by the Senate majority (226 votes to 119) is "acceptable to the government", said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who explained that this aspect would lead to the publication of a "new circular". In December, Gérald Darmanin will submit this text to the National Assembly, where the presidential camp does not have an absolute majority. "Gérald Darmanin must reconcile the irreconcilable. We have to make people believe that he was defeated in the Senate, but that it doesn't matter," Bruno Retailleau attacked on Public Sénat.
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"In the Assembly, we will reinstate the ambitious text of the executive, the entire text of the executive. Including the section on regularisations," promised Renaissance MP Sacha Houlié, the embodiment of the social aspect of the reform, in Le Figaro. "It's contemptuous," Bruno Retailleau said on Thursday. If, as I believe, he is committed to parliamentarism and parliamentary procedures, he should have waited. »
Long divided on this measure, the LR and centrist senators agreed to avoid an outright rejection of the text, a hypothesis described by some as "dramatic" for the "legitimacy" of the High Assembly. "What we have done with the centrists is an upward agreement," Bruno Retailleau said.
The formal vote scheduled for Tuesday on the text as a whole should confirm a very severe tightening of the reform, with several right-wing markers already integrated: abolition of state medical aid, tightening of family reunification, migration quotas, reinstatement of the crime of illegal residence... "This text is a cabinet of horrors, a capitulation in the open countryside of the government, a game of hosiery where an article is deleted in order to rewrite it in a worse way," said Green senator Thomas Dossus.
A "Darmaninization of the text of the law"
The president of the Socialist group, Patrick Kanner, accused of a "Darmaninisation of the text of the law" and asked Gérald Darmanin to "launch a search notice for a missing minister", a swipe at the absence from the bench this week of Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labour, who initially carried the "integration" section of the text.
Read also"It's become the mother of all battles": the immigration bill in the Senate, the executive has its back to the wall
Debates were clearly tense on Wednesday on the issue of the right of the soil, which is restricted by senators. Stéphane Ravier (Reconquête) caused a stir when he said that "a calf born in a stable will never make him a horse". The left screamed "racism."
With this muscular text that is taking shape, is the government carving out a path through the Assembly with the votes of the LR group or its abstention? The latter "could be satisfied with the Senate's copy," LR MP Annie Genevard told the Association of Parliamentary Journalists (AJP). With one major caveat: "I'm mostly waiting to see what the National Assembly will do with it." The right is constantly threatening a no-confidence motion if the government prefers to activate Article 49.3 to avoid a vote, even if it has little chance of succeeding without the support of the left.