HARDENING MIGRATION POLICY WANTED BY EMMANUEL MACRON

"We do not have the right not to look at it in the face. (...) The left did not want to look at this problem for decades.

Popular classes have migrated to the far right. "

The president does not intend to leave the subject on immigration to the right and the extreme right in view of the next elections, municipal in 2020 followed by the presidential election of 2022.

One of the priorities of this second part of the quinquennium is to reconnect with the working classes after the crisis of "yellow vests" which has shaken the power. So the president on Monday called his majority and his government to the firmness on immigration, to avoid being "a bourgeois party" that ignores the opinion of popular classes seduced by the far right.

Because immigration concerns the French well and truly. According to an Ipsos Sopra-Steria study for Le Monde published Monday, September 16, 64% of respondents feel that "we do not feel at home as before" (+4 points since 2017), and 63% think that there are too many foreigners in France. How to respond to these concerns?

Right of asylum

Emmanuel Macron intends to act mainly on the right of asylum, a principle he reaffirmed but that he considers "diverted from its purpose by networks, people who manipulate". France recorded a 23% increase in asylum applications last year, after already increasing by 7.1% in 2016 and 17.5% in 2017.

With demands coming from Albania and Georgia, which are rising sharply, that the public authorities consider largely unfounded. 27% of applications were accepted, a stable figure compared to the previous year.

However, there is very little deportation at the border, so that the unsuccessful ones increase the number of illegal immigrants.

The restriction of AME

The debates in parliament will also focus on state medical aid (AME) to "control the costs and ensure that it goes well to people in distress," according to government spokesman Sibeth Ndiaye .

The AME, which represents a budget of some 943 million euros and covers more than 300,000 people, allows foreigners who are illegally resident and have been living in France for more than three months to benefit from access to healthcare.

A 2015 parliamentary report estimated that 70% of the MEA was for hospital costs related to serious illnesses, such as tuberculosis or HIV, and some deliveries. The government is thinking of restricting access to the MEA.

Two tracks seem to emerge: either via the criteria to be profitable, or via the number of treatments that can be reimbursed.

But to seize the subject of immigration is also to look at the problem of integration.