2023-11-09 10:21:27
This is a turn of the screw that the government considers “acceptable”. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the Senate tightened the most emblematic part of the immigration bill, concerning regularization in professions in shortage. At the heart of the examination of a text mainly focused on the control of immigration and the simplification of procedures for expulsion of delinquent foreigners, this system of integration of immigrants through work has crystallized the debates for months… And the upper house did not escape the ambient tension, after an evening of invective in session.
Building on an agreement negotiated in extremis between the two sides of its right-wing and center majority under the approving eye of the government, the Senate removed the executive’s initial measure and immediately replaced it with its own restricted system. Exit article 3, which allowed the granting of a residence permit “as of right” to undocumented workers in sectors with a labor shortage. Praised by the left wing of the presidential camp, the measure was set up as a red line by the Republicans, who see it as an “automatic right” and fear a “draft”.
For Retailleau, “it’s a political victory”
Place now on article “4 bis”, which provides in these sectors of activity a residence permit granted by the prefects “on a case by case” and “on an exceptional basis”, in a “strictly supervised procedure” and accompanied by multiple conditions, including that of respect for the “values of the Republic”. “It’s a political victory,” reacted this Thursday morning on Public Senate the president of the LR group in the Senate Bruno Retailleau. “If we lose this battle, we will roll out the red carpet for Marine Le Pen,” he added.
The compromise found by the senatorial majority (226 votes against 119) is “acceptable for the government”, estimated the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, who explained that this aspect would lead to the publication of a “new circular”. Gérald Darmanin will submit this draft to the National Assembly in December, 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 beaten in the Senate, but that it doesn’t matter,” attacked Bruno Retailleau on Public Senate.
“In the Assembly, we will restore the ambitious executive text, the entire executive text. Including the section on regularizations,” promised in Le Figaro the Renaissance deputy Sacha Houlié, incarnation of the social aspect of the reform. “It’s contemptuous,” Bruno Retailleau replied this Thursday. If, as I think, he is attached to parliamentarianism and parliamentary procedures, he should have waited. »
Long divided on this measure, 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 did with the centrists is an upward agreement,” said Bruno Retailleau on this subject.
The solemn vote scheduled for this Tuesday on the entire text should confirm a very severe tightening of the reform, with several markers of the right already integrated: abolition of state medical aid, tightening of family reunification, migration quotas, restoration of the offense of illegal residence… “This text is the cabinet of horrors, a capitulation in the open countryside of the government, a game of bonneteau where an article is deleted to rewrite it worse,” the senator was indignant ecologist Thomas Dossus.
A “darmanization of the text of the law”
The president of the socialist group Patrick Kanner criticized him for a “Darmanization of the text of the law” and asked Gérald Darmanin to “launch a search notice for a missing minister”, a tackle on the absence from the bench this week of Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labor who initially covered the “integration” aspect of the text.
The debates were clearly tense on Wednesday on the question of land law, restricted by the senators. Stéphane Ravier (Reconquête) particularly raised eyebrows when he felt that “a calf born in a stable will never make it a horse”. The left cried “racism”.
With this muscular text emerging, is the government creating 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”, admitted LR MP Annie Genevard to the Association of Parliamentary Journalists (AJP). With one major downside: “I am especially waiting to see what the National Assembly will do with it.” The right is in fact constantly brandishing the threat of a motion of censure if the government prefers to activate article 49.3 to avoid a vote, even if this has little chance of succeeding without the support of the left.
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