2024-03-26 13:21:31
According to them, the relocation of migrants is part of an effort to clean up Paris before the Olympics.
Orleans Mayor Serge Groard said up to 500 homeless migrants had been brought to Orleans, home to about 100,000 people.
“It has been proven that every three weeks a bus with 35 to 50 people from Paris arrives in Orléans,” the mayor told reporters, adding that it was being done to “clean up” the capital ahead of the Olympic Games in July and August.
Each returned migrant is provided with three weeks in a hotel at the expense of the state, but after that they must be able to fend for themselves, Groar explained.
In Paris, a destination for many illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, demand for short-term emergency accommodation far exceeds supply. As a result, unofficial migrant camps under bridges or on undeveloped plots of land regularly spring up in the French capital.
The police periodically demolish these camps, and their residents are offered the opportunity to apply for asylum. Government policy is to relocate many of them from Paris to places elsewhere in the country.
“There have been no consultations with us about [migrantu centra] creation, not about the people who will end up there,” the deputy mayor of Strasbourg told the AFP news agency, speaking about the new center near Strasbourg.
“On this issue, I agree with the mayor of Orleans that what is happening is quite opaque,” she added.
In the view of many small town mayors, this policy of Paris is irresponsible and dangerous.
In September 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron expressed support for the idea of dispersing asylum seekers and refugees across the country.
Macron called the long-standing policy of concentrating migrants in poor areas of big cities absurd and argued that the refugees could help bring about a “demographic transition” in rural and small-town France.
Many areas of France outside the big cities are experiencing population declines, resulting in school closures and labor shortages.
But right-wing politicians have long condemned the policy, accusing Macron of introducing poverty, crime and Islamism into French communities.
2024-03-26 13:21:31