Before the immigration law, NGOs fear “front view” consultation with the executive

They fear the discussions to come. The organizations which defend the exiles begin, from this Monday, a week of consultations at the Ministry of the Interior before the tabling of the bill on immigration, but fear discussions “frontage” on a very right-wing text.

If the executive has praised its “balance”, the future law, which must be tabled in early 2023, above all provides for a series of tightening measures to achieve greater efficiency in terms of expulsions.

The text aims to reform asylum procedures and drastically reduce the number of appeals to which foreigners who contest their removal have access.

The consultations planned until Friday with associations, NGOs and independent authorities open when the diptych “humanity and firmness”, put forward by the government, has shown its limits with the reception of the humanitarian ship Ocean Viking: almost all of the disembarked migrants were released from the “waiting area” where the authorities intended to lock them up, a symbol for the opposition that immigration control escapes the state.

29th immigration law since 1980

“We don’t want a facade consultation”, warned Pierre Henry, president of France fraternités “so much there is to say” about the government’s proposals.

Starting, he says, with the one that consists of issuing an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) as soon as an asylum application to the Ofpra (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) is rejected, without waiting a possible appeal.

For its part, the government has justified this new law on asylum and immigration, the 29th since 1980, by invoking the insecurity generated by some immigrants.

The consultation “comes a little late”, regrets Hélène Soupios-David, from France land of asylum. “We can only discuss on the sidelines, without going into detail. Before the tabling of the text, the government’s migration policy will be the subject of a debate on December 6 in the National Assembly and on December 13 in the Senate.