What we know about the terms of the possible agreement between the right and the government

2023-12-17 23:56:06

What will be the future of the immigration bill? A joint committee bringing together seven deputies and seven senators must decide on Monday the fate of the project carried by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. But negotiations have been going well since Wednesday between the right and the government, and points of compromise already seem to be emerging.

Loss of nationality, benefits, state medical aid, etc. 20 Minutes takes stock of what we know about the terms of the possible agreement between the right and the government.

State medical aid

The senators’ text planned to transform this State Medical Aid (AME), which allows foreigners in an irregular situation to have access to healthcare, into Emergency Medical Aid (AMU).

Several ministers, in unison with the medical world, showed very strong opposition to this reform from the start, and the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin considered that it was a legislative cavalier, it is that is to say a measure not directly related to the text and as such being able to be censored by the Constitutional Council.

The right and the government seem to have agreed on removing this subject from the text, provided that the government quickly presents a separate bill on the issue. “I believe that this is the agreement we are in, an Immigration text without the AME” but “which will be discussed from January”, said Gérald Darmanin on BFMTV on Sunday. Sunday evening, the president of the Les Républicains party Eric Ciotti indicated that he was expecting “for tomorrow morning” a “letter which must be sent to the President of the Senate on the timetable for a reform of the AME (State Medical Aid). for undocumented foreigners, editor’s note) which we want to see implemented at the beginning of 2024.”

Regularization of undocumented immigrants

A key provision of the text, and one of the most controversial, provides for the regularization of certain undocumented workers in professions in shortage. The version released by the Senate leaves the prefects with their “discretionary” power on the subject.

“We are attached to this article, there is no reason for us to modify it,” declared the president of the centrist Union group in the Senate Hervé Marseille. The government would have agreed to let go, even if the devil will be in the details. “We are trying to negotiate that it be automatic in the event of no response from the prefect: we must not embolize the prefectures,” said a Renaissance parliamentary source.

The Minister of the Interior suggested on Sunday that the employer’s approval may no longer be necessary for undocumented immigrants to make their request. The prefect “will be able to regularize people in particular who want to be regularized but whose employer refuses to grant regularization,” he said.

Loss of nationality, end of automaticity of land law

The government would have given its agreement to include a measure of forfeiture of nationality for dual nationals perpetrators of crimes against the police. “It doesn’t bother me,” said MoDem president François Bayrou. Proposed by François Hollande after the attacks of November 2015, the extension of the forfeiture of nationality had sparked months of controversy before being abandoned.

The executive would also be open to a measure requiring young people born in France to foreign parents to demonstrate their desire to acquire French nationality to obtain it.

Minors in detention center, emergency accommodation

According to consistent sources, the right has given its agreement to the ban on the confinement of minors in administrative detention centers (CRA). She would also have agreed to maintain the right to emergency accommodation for people subject to an Obligation to Leave French Territory (OQTF).

Allocations

One measure continues to fuel lively debate: the question of social benefits paid to foreigners in a legal situation. The Senate text plans to impose five years of residence on them to be able to benefit from allowances such as personalized housing assistance (APL) or family allowances, compared to six months currently.

“We are not in favor of this article, then we have to take a step,” affirmed Gérald Darmanin on this subject, evoking discussions on the required length of residence, the possible exclusion of the disabled, a different regime for “those who work” and “those who do not work”.

But Renaissance MP Astrid Panosyan expressed reluctance, fearing “a slap in the face in the way we have built social protection in our country”. “It’s called national preference. And this is the program of the National Rally,” reacted the leader of the socialist deputies Boris Vallaud.

Another measure, contested by the MoDem: the establishment of a “deposit” for foreign students. The right has other demands, such as the deletion of Article 4, on the right to work of certain asylum seekers, or the reinstatement of the offense of illegal residence.