President Emmanuel Macron of France tried to seize control of the issue of immigration on Wednesday, as his government announced steps to make the country less attractive to migrants while cracking open the door to skilled foreign workers, reports The New York Times.
The combined moves were a bid by Mr. Macron to wrest the issue from his main political challengers, the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National) of Marine Le Pen, which for years has skillfully used immigration in its political ascent.
With critical municipal elections just months away, Mr. Macron has shifted right and begun talking tough on immigration, especially on the perceived abuses of France’s generous social welfare system, hoping to keep Ms. Le Pen’s party, formerly known as the National Front, at bay.
Among Mr. Macron’s new get-tough measures is a provision that asylum seekers would have to wait three months before qualifying for non-urgent health care.
In addition, officials said that informal migrant camps in and around Paris would be cleared by the end of the year, as the government confronts a growing and visible problem in many French cities.
But the government also announced that, starting next year, it would for the first time establish a system of annual quotas to grant visas to skilled immigrants looking to enter France.
“We want to regain control over our immigration policy,” Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said.
While that may have been the intention, the announcement did as much to underline the political peril the issue presents for Mr. Macron, a centrist whose shape-shifting has often dissatisfied French voters across the political spectrum.
The measures drew immediate criticism from both the Right, who said they didn’t go far enough, and the Left, who said Mr. Macron was unnecessarily endangering the already vulnerable population of asylum seekers for political ends.
In recent weeks, Mr. Macron — who as a presidential candidate lauded Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for saving Europe’s “collective dignity” through her pro-migrant policies during the height of the crisis in 2015 — had been setting the stage for Wednesday’s announcement.
In a long interview on the presidential plane with a right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles, Mr. Macron recently said the authorities had been lax in expelling those who had entered France illegally.
“My goal is to throw out everybody who has no reason to be here,” he said.