2023-12-21 14:37:12
The law may have been passed, but the fight has only just begun for the unions. Adopted Tuesday evening after hours of debate, the controversial immigration law provides, for non-European foreigners, to extend the deadline for receiving social benefits, to reform state medical aid, to tighten access to nationality French, or even to leave to prefects the choice of regularizing or not undocumented workers in professions in shortage.
Invited this Thursday morning on RMC, Sophie Binet, the general secretary of the CGT, did not hide her contempt for this global turn of the screw towards non-European foreigners. According to her, Emmanuel Macron “is trapped in a political and moral shipwreck. The Titanic had started to sink with the pension reform, now we are hitting rock bottom with this law, which embodies the alliance of the world of money and xenophobic ideology,” she lamented.
This is why the CGT calls for “civil disobedience” and the “multiplication of resistance”. The revolt has begun: 32 departments led by the left, including Paris, have already affirmed that they will not apply the tightening of the conditions for payment of the personalized autonomy allowance to foreigners. The Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, has resigned. A gesture which Sophie Binet “welcomes”: “I hope it will be followed by other (ministers)”, she adds.
On an individual level too, “each and everyone in our daily lives can put solidarity first”, maintains the trade unionist: “When you are a parent of a student, you can organize solidarity actions if a child from school is expelled. »
Events to be planned
Initiatives against this law would begin to be organized “across the territory”. Demonstrations, still under discussion with “associations, unions and personalities”, are to be expected. “The CGT wants to ensure that there are large-scale initiatives to mobilize those who do not recognize themselves in this lepenized France,” summarizes Sophie Binet.
It also torpedoed the discretionary power of prefects over the regularization of undocumented workers in professions in shortage (as is already the case today). “If the government really intended to regularize undocumented immigrants, it would do so. The scandal of this law is that it refers to the goodwill of the prefects, which does not work. »
Finally, Sophie Binet highlighted the “wealth” that immigration represents. “When we subscribe to the software of the extreme right, we make people believe that immigration is the source of insecurity. Immigration is an asset, 20% of jobs in Île-de-France are held by foreigners. And without them, hospitals would not function. » Nor the most difficult sectors, she adds in an interview with West France : “The hotel and catering industry, construction, home help, cleaning, bicycle delivery men, etc. »
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