It is a peculiarity of the age in France that the subject that most divides the political class is the one that most unites the people they govern. Immigration is the issue that needs to be urgently addressed, according to voters, a message they have been telling their politicians for years. In January 2013, a poll found that 70 per cent of the electorate believed there were too many foreigners in the country; that figure has remained constant over the years, rising slightly in 2023 after the riots, atrocities and Islamist attacks that have scarred the Republic this year.
A poll last week disclosed that 80 per cent of the public believe France should no longer accept any migrants. Racist? A few might be. Most, however, are simply fed up with the grim reality of mass uncontrolled immigration. Last week, official government figures revealed that 35 per cent of suspects arrested for violent robbery are foreigners, a figure that rises to 41 per cent for burglary. Emmanuel Macron is aware of this delinquency, admitting last year that half of crimes in Paris are committed by foreigners.
In fact, the president has been aware of the gravity of the situation for far longer. In an interview in October 2017 – five months after his election – Macron declared that ‘protection is the first mission of the State’. He made this statement in response to the brutal murder of two young women outside Marseille station, knifed to death by a Tunisian Islamist who had been arrested 48 hours earlier only to be released on a judicial technicality. In future, said Macron, ‘foreigners in the country illegally’ who commit an offence ‘of any kind will be deported’. Trust me, he said, ‘I will be uncompromising on the issue’.
Last month, Macron ruled out a referendum on immigration
Macron has failed to honour his pledge. In fact, the percentage of illegal immigrants expelled from France since 2017 has fallen from 13.5 per cent to 5.6 per cent in 2021.
It not just a lack of political will that is responsible for this systematic failure to protect the French people, it is also the tenacity of human rights lawyers and organisations to prevent deportations. This was the case with the young Islamist from the Caucasus who is in custody accused of murdering a schoolteacher in Arras in October.
Since he had his immigration bill humiliatingly thrown out of parliament on Monday, France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, has pointed an accusatory finger at Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. His charge is that by siding with the left to reject his bill they have conspired to endanger the French police. They refute the accusation. Le Pen said in voting against the bill ‘we have protected the French people from an additional migratory influx’.
Two years ago, while on the presidential campaign trail, Le Pen mooted the idea of a referendum in order to let the people finally have a say on immigration; she was supported by the centre-right Republican party, notably Michel Barnier, remembered by Britons as the suave EU Brexit negotiator.
The question of a referendum is again to the fore. Last week, Bruno Retailleau, the president of the Republicans in the Senate, said that: ‘We believe that the issue of immigration, which has changed French society like no other phenomenon, should be decided by the French people.’ The people are in favour; 74 per cent responded positively to the idea in a poll published in Friday’s Le Figaro.
A referendum then seems the obvious solution. In the early years of the 5th Republic, such votes were all the rage, a form of representative democracy favoured by Charles de Gaulle. Between 1958 and 1992, there were eight referendums; in the last 30 years there have been two. The last was in 2005, when the people were asked to vote yes or no to the EU constitution. They voted no, to the frothing rage of the political and cultural elite. There have been no referendums since. Four years ago, in the wake of the Yellow Vest movement, Macron conceded that ‘we should give more thought to the referendum route in our democracy’.
But last month, Macron ruled out a referendum on immigration. He evidently thought about it, studied the opinion polls and concluded the result would be a resounding defeat for him and his pro-migrant party.
So the French people continue to be denied a voice on the most important issue of the century, one which is rapidly transforming their country. The most recent census in France, in 2020, revealed that 40 per cent of children between the ages of 0 and 4 have an immigrant background of some kind, overwhelmingly from Africa.
On Monday, a 14-strong cross-party committee composed of MPs and senators will attempt to find a compromise on the rejected immigration bill so that it can be passed. The smart money isn’t on an agreement being reached; the divergences are just too great.
Leading the negotiations on behalf of Macron is the left-wing Sacha Houlié, who last year tabled a bill to allow foreigners, including non-Europeans, to vote in municipal elections. This has been an ambition of the left since the presidency of Francois Mitterrand.
Facing Houlié across the negotiating table will be Bruno Retailleau, president of the Republican party in the Senate. On Thursday, he was one of three Republicans who wrote a letter to Macron urging him to undertake ‘an ambitious constitutional revision to better equip our nation legally to face the challenge of migration’. The principal objective of the revision would be to remove ‘the legal barriers that currently reduce us to impotence’.
No doubt the Republicans had in mind the recent case of the Uzbek national, deported in defiance of a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights because he was considered ‘radicalised’ and ‘very dangerous’; last week the Council of State ordered his return because he might be in danger in his homeland.
The letter written by the Republicans demanded that the constitution must be redrawn so that any foreigner considered a threat to public security can be removed. The Republicans called this a ‘common sense principle’. A common sense approach to immigration is what the French (and British) public have demanded for the last decade; unfortunately, the politicians that preside over them have very little of it.
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