Immigration law: centrist senators table a text containing numerous censored measures

2024-02-01 14:16:04

The group chaired by Hervé Marseille intends to re-examine numerous measures introduced at the initiative of the right in December in the immigration law. Measures rejected by the Constitutional Council as being deemed unrelated to the initial project such as the tightening of family reunification, the offense of illegal residence or the raising of the conditions of access to certain social benefits for foreigners.

However, if these 32 censored articles were included in a specific law, the Constitutional Council would then have to rule on the substance of these measures.

Submitted at the end of January and currently being registered by the Senate services, the centrist Union’s bill intends to include provisions “essential to the implementation of a fair and effective migration policy”, without “any mistrust towards -vis the Constitutional Council”, according to the explanatory memorandum of the text.

This centrist text includes 16 censored measures, several of which had irritated the presidential camp when they were included in the government’s bill in December, after negotiations between the right and the government. It therefore plans to tighten the conditions for family reunification by extending from 18 to 24 months the length of residence required to qualify for it, by excluding spouses under 21 from the system and by requiring the applicant to have a “basic” level of French. .

Gérald Darmanin rejects the idea

Also reinstated, the extension to five years of the duration of residence necessary for foreigners who do not work to benefit from the personalized autonomy allowance and family benefits. However, the centrists do not mention personal housing assistance (APL), which caused a lot of talk in December. The offense of illegal residence, with a penalty of a criminal fine, is also proposed in their text, as is the impossibility for foreigners in an irregular situation to benefit from fare reductions in Ile-de-France transport. On the other hand, much debated, the deposit requested from foreign students in France to plan their return is not integrated into the text, but they will nevertheless have to “prove annually” of the “real and serious” nature of their studies.

These measures “were adopted by the Assembly and the Senate, I want to believe that they can be adopted again”, assured Hervé Marseille after the Council’s decision. The Republicans had asked the government to take these measures itself in a bill. For the moment, the LR group in the Senate has not communicated its intentions regarding this centrist bill.

On the other hand, the door should remain closed on the government side. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin rejected this idea on Thursday evening on TF1.