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French lawmakers to debate anti-immigrant bill
Protesters also getting ready
February 24, 1997
Web posted at: 8:30 p.m. EST (0130 GMT)In this story:
- Opponents: immigrants shouldn't be 'presumed guilty'
- Conservatives: even tougher laws needed
- Related stories and sites
From Correspondent Peter Humi
PARIS (CNN) -- A simmering debate threatens to boil over Tuesday, when France's lower legislative body takes up a bill aimed at curbing illegal immigration and employment.
Opponents of the measure, led by the artistic community, planned to protest near the parliament buildings. Lawmakers in the National Assembly were to debate the bill over three days.
Protesters have filled the streets of French cities in recent days, including tens of thousands in Paris on Saturday.
In the face of such opposition, which included calls for civil disobedience, the government compromised on the bill's most controversial measure.
It scrapped the part that would have forced French citizens hosting visitors to report their guests' movements to police. Now the bill proposes that it be up to the visitors themselves to check in with the authorities when they change their residence.
Opponents: immigrants shouldn't be 'presumed guilty'
But immigrant human rights groups consider the bill to be another sign of growing discrimination.
France first introduced immigration restrictions more than 25 years ago that were aimed mainly against citizens of former French colonies in Africa and Asia.
But official figures estimate there are some 300,000 illegal immigrants in France, thousands of whom are engaged in the black market or employed illegally.
"We don't want the immigrants to be presumed guilty," said protest organizer Bertrand Tavernier, a noted film director. "We don't want to have the feeling of hate increased against foreigners."
At the St. John the Baptist church in east Paris, about 400 Asian immigrants staged a demonstration of their own over the weekend to demand residence rights. Police evicted them peacefully after promising not to arrest anyone.
Last summer, a similar sit-in ended in violence when police forcibly evicted and arrested African immigrants, many of whom had been on a hunger strike for several weeks.
That episode may have embarrassed the authorities and highlighted the plight of immigrants, but it also played into the hands of the extreme right.
Conservatives: even tougher laws needed
Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front saw his party win a crucial local election in southern France this month. He said the immigration law doesn't go far enough.
"In order to end the wave of immigration that threatens to drown us all, we need legislation that ends the right to nationality, or dual nationality," Le Pen said, adding a call for "positive discrimination" favoring the French on jobs.
The National Front's election win came on an openly anti-immigrant platform. The message: at a time of high unemployment the country simply can not afford immigrants.
It's a message that seems to have struck a chord. Despite the visible opposition to the proposed laws, opinion polls consistently show a majority believe further curbs on immigration are necessary.
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