In a significant development, the French constitutional court has invalidated several provisions of a highly debated immigration law. This decision comes in the wake of widespread protests held across the nation, where tens of thousands of individuals expressed their concerns about the law’s perceived far-right influences and the potential implications it could have for France. Additional protests were planned following the ruling, according to reports.
A new law was passed in December with the aim of bolstering the country’s immigration policies. The law seeks to improve the country’s ability to deport foreigners who are deemed “undesirable” and to make it harder for the foreign-born population to access social welfare benefits. French President Emmanuel Macron, who worked with the conservative Republicans party to pass the law, described its approval as a result of a compromise. In a recent development, Marine Le Pen, a prominent far-right leader and former opponent of Macron in the elections, hailed the legislation as a significant “ideological victory” for her party, the National Rally.
Reuters reports that on Thursday, France’s Constitutional Council threw out more than a third of the law’s provisions. These included provisions that would have made it harder for migrants to reunite with their families, for birthright citizenship, and for people to get state support.
The court was asked by Macron to make sure the law was in line with France’s Constitution. The upcoming decision from the court helped bring 75,000 protesters out into the streets on Sunday, according to numbers from the Interior Ministry that were reported by the French newspaper Le Monde.
Hundreds of environmentalists and leaders on the left called for the protests. They wrote in France’s daily newspaper Libération that the law violated “the principles of the French Revolution” and “an unprecedented decline in the protections and rights guaranteed to foreigners” in the country.
French People to the Streets to Protest
The French have been protesting many times since the beginning of 2023, but this most recent one was especially about the immigration law. This law has been so controversial that it was a big reason why former Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne quit in early January.
Le Monde says that the parts of the law that caused the most debate were the parts that limited access to social benefits and set limits on immigration. In an interview in December, Macron said that the law wasn’t perfect and that he wanted to change some parts of it. For example, he wanted to get rid of a requirement that foreign students pay a fee to study in France.
Reforming immigration rules has become a divisive problem in Europe as a whole. Germany also recently had large protests against a right-wing political party that talked about the idea of deporting a lot of people who were born in Germany but live there illegally.
There is likely a link between the unrest in France and how some French people feel about the country’s politics in general. The Associated Press reported that some people see the passing of the bill as a sign that the French government is moving to the right.
France Facing an Influx of Immigration
Macron has said that the number of migrants coming to France is higher than it was ten years ago, but he has also made it clear that the country is not “overwhelmed by immigration.”
Data from the government backs up this claim. A report released in July 2018 by France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) said that the number of immigrants in France had grown from 8.5% in 2010 to 10.3% in 2022. According to a translation of the institute’s study, the “number of immigrants has again grown faster than the total population” since the turn of the century. This is after going up and down over the course of several decades.
There have been heated arguments for a long time in France, which has one of the largest Muslim populations in Western Europe, about the role of faith and race in society.
Public Opinion on Immigration Changed in France
In December, the president of France said that the rule on immigration is “what the French wanted.” At least one new study seems to agree with this. A poll from BFM-TV/Elabe that came out at the end of December found that 70% of people were happy with the new law, but only 43% thought the text was fair. And almost three quarters of them (73%) thought the law was based on ideas from the National Rally party.
However, French people have mixed feelings about immigrants in general. According to some studies and news stories, French people have become more open to migrants in the last few years. The most recent U.S. News Best Countries study found that French people were one of the least positive of the 36 countries surveyed about letting more immigrants in. However, France’s support for more immigration was slightly higher in 2023 than it was in 2022.
