Immigration bill: Olivier Véran believes in “intelligent compromise”

2023-10-01 15:12:50

“This text contains article 3”. It’s 12:32 p.m. precisely this Sunday, and Olivier Véran assures us on the set of BFMTV: the immigration bill currently provides for the regularization of undocumented workers in professions in shortage.

But there is a “but” and it comes from the Republicans – and the lack of an absolute majority in the National Assembly for the government. Éric Ciotti has said it again and again, notably this weekend in our columns, the right will “never accept in any form whatsoever the extension of the principles of regularization of illegal immigrants”.

Simple political posture, sweeps away the government spokesperson. “There are emblematic subjects, subjects of identification” for the Republicans, and immigration is precisely one of them. For him, this “simple, pragmatic” measure is “common sense” and is, moreover, “popular”.

“How can we be against it? » he asks. And to propose, in a tone of defiance: “Let’s go constituency by constituency, discuss with the representatives of employers, with the employees on site and let us explain to them for what political reasons the right-wing deputies do not want (this measure) either in the text.

Consultations to “search for a way of passage”

If discussions seem to have stalled with the right on the subject, Olivier Véran wants to believe it and pleads, like Emmanuel Macron, for an “intelligent compromise”, at a time when the text is still in “consultation with the political forces to look for a way of passage. “I don’t despair that we’ll get there,” he assures us.

The government spokesperson does not rule out, however, the use of a circular to enforce this measure, one of the aspects of a reform which also wants to fight against illegal immigration, impose a minimum level in French and respect for the values ​​of the Republic. “If we consult and say whatever happens, that’s it and it won’t be anything else, it’s not a consultation,” he first tries to reassure. Before concluding with a sentence which at the very least qualifies the previous observation: “What matters is not the way in which we adopt something, it is that in the end” it is done.