France aims to speed up the expulsion of illegal migrants while making it easier to obtain residency permits for those who work in sectors struggling to find workers, the interior and labour ministers said in a joint interview published on Wednesday, reports US News & World Report.
Over the past weeks the subject of expulsion orders for undocumented migrants has been at the heart of public debate in France, following the murder of a 12-year-old girl, for which the main suspect is an Algerian woman with no residency permit.
"If I had to summarise, I would say that we must now be mean to the bad guys and nice to the good ones," interior minister Gérald Darmanin said in a joint interview with labour minister Olivier Dusspot in Le Monde newspaper.
They described a bill due to be voted on in parliament in early 2023 that would include measures favoured by the right: making expulsions easier, eliminating protection for groups such as those who arrived in France as small children, and denying welfare benefits to those told to leave.