The French parliament has passed an immigration bill backed by President Emmanuel Macron by a large margin.
The bill has been tightened significantly since it was first introduced, and some leftists in Macron’s ruling Renaissance party accused his government of caving in to Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale (RN) party in an attempt to win support.
349 deputies voted in favour with 186 against. The Upper House has already passed the law. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, who has spearheaded the legislation, noted:
Today, strict measures are necessary. It’s not by holding your nose in central Paris that you can fix the problems of the French in the rest of the country.
The previous version of the bill was voted down without discussion in the National Assembly. Under pressure from the right-wing, the government agreed to relax the rules for obtaining residence permits, delaying for several years migrants’ access to social benefits for children and housing.
The amendments would introduce a series of migration quotas that would make it more difficult for the children of migrants to obtain French citizenship and stipulate that dual nationals convicted of serious offences against the police could be stripped of their French citizenship.
The French have long prided themselves on having one of the most generous social security systems in the world, providing payments even to foreign residents, helping them pay rent or look after their children with monthly contributions of up to several hundred euros. A growing number of MPs, however, argue that these payments should be reserved for French people.
Macron made the migration bill one of the key points of his second mandate, and it may have had to be postponed without this compromise. Dozens of non-governmental organisations condemned the bill on the eve of the vote. About 50 groups, including the French Human Rights League, said in a joint statement:
It is the most regressive bill of the past 40 years for the rights and living conditions of foreigners, including those who have long been in France.
France is among several European countries moving right on immigration. Macron had sought to balance a tougher stance that makes it easier to expel illegal migrants with a plan to streamline bureaucracy for undocumented workers in sectors that struggle to hire.
