Last month the French parliament adopted, with the support of the conservatives and the far-right, new legislation, “To control immigration, to improve integration” as it was officially presented, which significantly hardens laws on immigration, notably concerning the conditions of access to welfare benefits of non-EU foreign nationals in France.
Because President Emmanuel Macron’s party, Renaissance, has no overall majority in parliament, and was itself divided over the bill, its adoption on December 19th was possible due to the support of the conservative and far-right opposition. The government was initially unable to move the original bill through parliament due to opposition from both the Right and the Left. It was finally submitted to a special committee of Members of Parliament, when it was toughened up by those from the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, and met with the approval of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). Marine Le Pen, who leads the RN parliamentary group, claimed the new legislation was an “ideological victory” for her party.
The new measures include a significant hardening of the rights of non-EU nationals to welfare benefits, but also their children’s right to French citizenship when born in the country, stricter rules for foreign students enrolling in higher education, and the fast-tracking of the implementation of deportation orders.
More than 50 organisations, including the French League of Human Rights, Oxfam France, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Abbé Pierre foundation, signed a joint statement hours before the draft legislation was approved by Parliament, in a vain last-ditch appeal for it to be thrown out. The co-signatories said the parliamentary debates over the bill had “little by little brought down the barriers, leaving free reign for xenophobia which is today completely unrestrained”.
Denouncing, among other things, the bill’s “infringements of the right to health and family life” and the “restriction of access to residence permits for students and sick people”, they concluded: “The principles of equality, solidarity and humanity, on which our republic is founded, appear to no longer be today a legitimate compass for government action.”
Among the measures that have notably shocked opponents of the new legislation, is the stipulation that access for non-EU foreign nationals to child benefits, priority access to social housing (Dalo), and care allowance (APA) for the homebound aged over 60 with reduced mobility, is restricted to those who have held a residence permit for 30 months or more in the case of the employed, and five years or more in the case of those who do not work.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Access to a financial contribution (APL) towards the cost of rented accommodation for those on very modest income is only possible after five years of legal residency for those who do not work, and after three months for those who do. Foreign students are barred from receiving APL payments.
Marie-Aleth Grard is president of the French branch of ATD Quart Monde, an international NGO dedicated to fighting poverty. She described the measures contained in the new legislation as “dramatic”, and said that if the moves to restrict access to social welfare benefits is aimed at dissuading immigration, they could only fail. “One should not believe that people who live in an infernal situation in their own country check before coming if they’ll have the right to benefits,” she said. “They depart, that’s all.” She is especially concerned that the new legislation will create important difficulties regarding housing. “The very poor are not looked after, we content ourselves to simply point a finger at them. Families are going to find themselves in totally impossible situations.”
The [French] president, the government and parliament will push these households into the hands of slumlords
Slumlords are likely to benefit from those in such precarious conditions, while Manuel Domergue, head of studies with the Fondation Abbé Pierre, said he feared that people would end up “sub-renting from friends, on a sofa – or simply [living] out in the street”. That view was shared by the Mouvement HLM, which represents the different actors in reduced-rent housing (habitation à loyer modéré, or HLM) for those with modest incomes, in a statement released on December 20th. “By deciding that a section of the population living in France, in a legal manner, will be deprived of this aid, the [French] president, the government and parliament will push these households into the hands of slumlords, undeclared rentals, and will further fragilize them,” it warned.
While access specifically to the RSA welfare benefit – a survival income paid to those with minimal or no resources – was, already before the new legislation, restricted to those foreign nationals who had resided legally in France for at least five years, Domergue underlined that until now, the conditions for the right of access to social benefits were not dictated by a person’s employment status.
“To prevent access to the APL [rent contribution] potentially constitutes removing an important resource,” said Domergue. “People who obtain a residence permit believe they will be able to settle down and eventually be able to request social housing after years of roaming. But here, it signifies several more years of further hardship for those who don’t work.”
Pascal Brice, president of the Fédération des acteurs de la solidarité, an umbrella group for organisations and associations that provide people in social distress with shelter and help with reinsertion, said he was “dismayed” over the new immigration legislation. He fears “an explosion” of consequences “which firstly will weigh on the lives of individuals, which will weigh on the action of associations, and notably social workers who are already in a state of profound crisis, and the volunteers in associations which will all have to turf people out”.
Brice, who between 2012 and 2018 was director of the French state office for the protection of refugees and the stateless, believes the new law will place foreign nationals in “a vicious circle” – because without the APL rent relief payment they will not be able to find suitable accommodation, and without accommodation they will be unable to find work, which they must have in order to receive the APL benefit in the shortest time (30 months).
Noam Leandri is president of Alerte, which similarly acts as an umbrella group for several dozen associations providing help for the poor and socially excluded. He denounces the new legislation “which marks a loss of rights and leads to a pauperization of foreign people”, adding that the measures it contains run against the “principles of equality and fraternity”.
But beyond questions of morality, he argues that certain aspects of the legislation, like that concerning the APL, are illogical. That is because, he argues, a section of the rental market is taken up by tenants who receive the APL payment, and to now exclude foreign nationals from the APL system will inevitably lead to them being placed in emergency accommodation. “A night at a hotel is three times more expensive than [if they were given] access to social housing and to receive the APL,” he said. “The calculation is a bad one.”
A 'terrible precedent'
Leandri underlined the difficulties for some in finding work. “Not because they don’t want to work but because foreigner face barriers at the entrance to the labour market. Some have qualifications that aren’t recognised [in France], others don’t have the necessary legal documents. What’s more, if they don’t work they won’t be entitled to the rights of the social model. It’s completely contradictory.”
He also warned of the added pressure that would be put on food bank charities, already under strain: “How will these families feed themselves? There is double talk from the government which says it helps associations provide food aid and obtain accommodation but, at the same time, creates even more situations of precarity and an increasing need for help from associations.”
Manuel Domergue of the Fondation Abbé Pierre raised the issue of single mothers who either cannot find work or who cannot work because they have to look after their children. Under the new legislation, they will not be allowed child benefit payments or help with accommodation. “It’s a terrible precedent,” said Domergue. “The legislation targets children, because by definition child benefit payments are for them.”
The many NGOs and associations expressing such concerns now place their hope in the Constitutional Council, which is to deliberate on the legal validity of the many measures contained in the new legislation before it can be promulgated. “You can’t ask someone to pay [social security] contributions while they then don’t benefit from what is financed by their tax payments and contributions,” said Leandri. “In that case, they must also be told to not pay taxes for five years because they will have no rights to anything.”
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.