The French National Assembly approved this Tuesday the controversial immigration reform, which offers concessions to the right to control the arrival of immigrants to the European country, after the setback suffered last week by the Government of French President Emmanuel Macron.
The Assembly has given the ‘green light’ to the text with the favorable votes of 349 deputies, while 186 have voted against. The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, has celebrated that the initiative has been approved without the support of the far-right National Rally.
The Assembly had previously rejected – by 284 votes against and 155 votes in favor – a motion presented by the left-wing party La Francia Insumisa to overthrow the immigration reform, a text that has raised blisters in the most progressive sector of Renacimiento, President Macron’s party.
The Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, denounced during the debate the “rude maneuvers” of the National Rally, party of the far-right Marine le Pen. “They plant the flag on our text even though they did not vote for it in the Senate,” she argued, according to French newspapers.
The support of Le Pen’s far-right party for the draft has caused even Macron to speak out, ensuring that he himself would overturn the initiative if it only had the favorable votes of said party.
The draft law was previously approved in the Senate with 214 votes in favor and 114 against after a mixed parliamentary commission, made up of seven deputies and seven senators, agreed on a consensus text.
In the midst of the differences that the initiative has raised, several ministers, including those of Health, Higher Education and Housing, Aurélien Rousseau, Sylvie Retailleau and Patrice Vergriete, respectively, have threatened to resign a few hours before voting began in the National Assembly.
One of the main sources of tension has been social aid, since initially the right called for a clear tightening of current policies. These types of benefits, for example those intended for families or housing issues, will be conditional on foreigners having been in France for at least five years, instead of six months as until now. If you have a job, the terms are reduced to between three and 30 months, depending on the subsidy.
In addition, the draft includes measures for the regularization of immigrants who can work in sectors with a shortage of labor – subject to the discretion of the prefects -, the tightening of the requirements for family reunification, the recovery of the crime of stay illegal, the prohibition of the entry of minors into administrative detention centers or the withdrawal of nationality for those who commit crimes against the security forces.
The debate occurs after the Government failed last week in its attempt to approve the measure, which led the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, to present his resignation, although Macron rejected his departure from the Executive.
