“The process of toughening the immigration text was underway”

2023-12-18 16:00:02
The environmentalist deputy for Yvelines Benjamin Lucas, at the National Assembly, in Paris, December 11, 2023. JULIEN MUGUET/JULIEN MUGUET FOR “LE MONDE”

Green MP Benjamin Lucas deplores the fact that the government did not withdraw the immigration bill following the adoption of the prior rejection motion in the National Assembly that it had brought. The elected official from Yvelines thinks that there cannot be a majority on this text in the Hemicycle even if the joint committee were to reach a compromise on Monday, December 18.

You passed a rejection motion which led to discussions between The Republicans (LR) and the government. Isn’t that the opposite of the desired effect?

I continue to fully accept this rejection motion: we have avoided two weeks of a debate which would have been swallowed up by an atmosphere of racism which already permeates the public debate. We know what that would have been like with eighty-eight RN deputies and an interior minister who has lost all compass. I believe that we forced Macronie to do in a few hours what they had planned to do in a few days. The political process of hardening the text, of headlong flight, was underway. With fifteen days of examination, the minister would have had more time to negotiate with The Republicans. In the Hemicycle on Monday [11 décembre]he said he was ready to discuss blade [aide médicale d’Etat], on the crime of illegal residence, two signals addressed to the radicalized right. We have allowed the illusion of “at the same time” to be exploded, which shows an absence of the government’s humanist compass.

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However, in the law committee, the presidential majority began to unravel the Senate version. Couldn’t you have tried to exert your influence in the Hemicycle to obtain more?

The law commission’s text is even less balanced than the government’s initial version: it includes quotas, provisions restricting family reunification and finally, on professions in tension, it abdicates completely. I said “it’s better than nothing, but almost nothing”, because in the end, it is only a matter of a few regularizations, in a few regions and in a few professions in tension. And it remains an experiment. The same evening [du vote de la motion], [Gérald] Darmanin had planned to go to CNews with Pascal Praud, a sign of his decision to give pledges to the radicalized right.

Did you not condemn the regularization measure in professions in tension that the associations were asking for?

I invite the associations to trust us with parliamentary analysis, as we trust them with everything that concerns substance on these subjects. Article 4 bis of regularization of professions in shortage would have failed. If the government had softened its text, where would it find its majority? The Minister of the Interior has never sought a majority with the left.

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