On December 19, the French parliament adopted yet another immigration law, the 117th law on the subject since 1945! – and much worse than all the previous ones. Proposed by the Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, and sponsored by President Emmanuel Macron, it was heavily rewritten by right-wing senators from the Les Républicains party, and was finally adopted with the support of the votes of Rassemblement National (RN) led by Marine Le Pen.
It is easy to understand why the racist xenophobic RN voted in favour of this law and claimed an ideological victory. The law contains an array of measures whose effect will be to deny basic benefits and rights to many immigrants, supporting the RN objective of “national preference” (according to which French citizens should be given priority in access to state welfare) and will greatly contribute to spreading the RN’s lies: that immigrants come to France only to benefit from social measures, that they are responsible for the lack of housing and jobs, that they are criminal and dangerous for the national security. In brief, it is a toxic mix of racism and xenophobia, peppered with lies and slanders.
Measures
The new law includes measures such as:
– state benefits, like support for housing or for families, will be provided to immigrants only after a delay of up to five years, depending on whether they work or not – despite the fact that most immigrants are not allowed to work when they arrive in France.
– the introduction of quotas for immigrants, and the regularisation of immigrant workers will be subject to the good-will of the Prefects.
– a blow against the principle of the “loi du sol”, the right of those born in France to become French citizens at the age of majority, going back to a previous law sponsored by the arch-reactionary Charles Pasqua.
– foreign university students will have to pay a “deposit” to the state, reimbursed only when they leave the country at the end of their studies.
– bi-national citizens will lose their French nationality if guilty of severe crimes.
Moreover, to obtain the support of the right wing, the government promised that, early 2024, State Medical Aid, by which all immigrants can obtain urgent health care, will be “reformed”, meaning, probably, it will be severely restricted or abolished.
The law contains measures so shockingly reactionary, that the government had to rely on the Constitutional Council to abrogate some of its articles, because they are against the 1946 preamble to the Constitution, stating that “No person shall suffer prejudice because of his origin”.
The approval of the law was a big shock even in Macron’s camp, with 59 MP voting against it, and one minister resigning. Macron’s claim in the last two presidential elections, that he is a bulwark against Marine Le Pen and her ideas, has been proven to be yet another lie. However, the working class has little to expect from the “left” inside the presidential camp, as they accepted or even conducted many other attacks against the workers.
French capitalism and overexploitation
For centuries, French capitalism has needed cheap, super-exploited labour. First in the form of slaves in the Caribbean islands, later forced indigenous labour in its colonial empire and, in the last century, immigrants, recently especially from Maghreb. The democratic rights of these workers were systematically negated, reaching a hysteric level during the Algeria independence war in the 1950s and 1960s. Racist ideology was used as an ideological justification for this discrimination, despite the fact that “Egalité” (equality) is proclaimed on all public buildings.
The racist police and state apparatus, with personnel recycled from the fascist Vichy regime after the Second World war, was responsible for repression and massacres against immigrant workers. The Front National, founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, was built on racist ideology and oriented massively towards supporters of Algérie Française. However, the traditional right wing parties also flattered racist ideas and this is even true of the left parties.
The French bourgeoisie were always more than ready to employ and exploit immigrant workforce, most of them from the ex-French colonies in Africa, both Maghreb and in Western Africa. The racist oppression allows the bosses to keep them in low-paid jobs, often denying basic workers’ and union rights.
Contrary to the slander that immigrants are flowing to France seeking state aid, most of them spend long years working clandestinely as “sans papier” (lacking the required documentation) especially in the construction and service sectors. Far from profiting from state welfare, they actually pay obligatory social contributions, but are not entitled to any corresponding aid.
Despite racist hysteria, the proportion of immigrants in the country population is hardly growing: from 6.5 % in 1975 to 7.8 % in 2022. Even the chair of MEDEF, the main bosses’ association, calculates that the French economy will need about 3.9 million immigrant workers in the coming decades, because of the low birth rate. French capital wants “controlled” migration, continuing to force immigrants into extremely insecure and super-exploited positions.
The far right wants to go even further. Already in the 1980s, Jean-Marie Le Pen coined the slogan “one million immigrants, one million unemployed” suggesting that expelling the immigrants would solve the unemployment problem. Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie, hammers the concept of “national preference”, and warns of the submersion of the French people under the wave of immigrants. Her ideas are clearly legitimated by the new law.
In this respect, the law is a break with previous racist laws. While all of them contained attacks against the principle of equality, the sheer number of concentrated blows against immigrants contained in this law puts it clearly on another level, much more dangerous. It reflects the spread of racism and xenophobia among the French population: Marine Le Pen’s party is poised, according to the polls, to be the first party in France in the coming European elections next June with about 28 %, well ahead of Macron’s Renaissance party with 20 %. In addition, her fascist niece, Marion Maréchal, is predicted to gain 6.5 %.
Whose victory?
President Macron claimed a victory with this approval, showing that he is not a “lame duck” and that he is capable of passing laws without using undemocratic tricks of the French 5th Republic constitution. Les Républicains also claimed a victory as they were pivotal in the approval of the law and strongly influenced its content. For both of them, this “victory” will soon appear to be a Pyrrhic one. Racist voters will prefer the original racist party, RN, to other forces simply imitating it and the ideological influence of RN ideas will be strengthened at all levels by this measure.
Working class
The French working class faces a difficult situation. Already weakened in the political arena by Macron’s victory in the struggle around pensions at the beginning of the year, it faces possible divisions in its own ranks between “French” and immigrant workers, and augmented repression against the immigrant brothers and sisters.
The Socialist Party, the Communist Party and France Insoumise all rejected the law. 32 departments led by the Socialist Party declared that they will not apply it, as did the Paris mayor. The CGT leader, Sophie Binet, declared: “CGT calls for civil disobedience and the multiplication of the actions of resistance against this law that undermines all our republican principles and prepares the ground for the far right.” In the coming weeks, the CGT will organise “massive initiatives to allow those who do not identify themselves with a le Pen-ised France to show their determination so that solidarity values are respected”.
All this is correct but one can certainly doubt the effectiveness of the resistance by the reformist parties and by the unions, as they were unable to stop the pension reform. There is a real risk that the “massive initiatives” by reformists will be toothless symbolic actions. Workers should call on their leaders to prepare the most effective resistance against the law, not in the comfortable seats of the Parliament, but in the workplaces, the banlieues, the streets.
Workers must be ready to mobilise this resistance with the weapons of class struggle, whether the reformist leaders agree to it or not. Civil disobedience must be accompanied by protest and mass strikes in favour of a massive regularisation of sans-papiers, as well as the abrogation of the whole lot of racist laws of the past years.
Immigrants, some of them sans-papiers, are massively employed in the construction sites for the coming Olympics games in 2024, and they will be on the front line for the organisation of that event, in transport, security, hotels, restaurants, cleaning etc. The workers must be ready to block all related activity until the law is abrogated and such actions must be supported by all unions, all working class parties and organisations. They must organise for self-defence against likely repression by the state or right wing or even fascist forces.
The only way to stop the spread of racist ideas among the ranks of the working class is to propose, popularise and fight for a programme of action against all the racist laws and addresses the real causes behind the growth of RN: low wages, lack of jobs, lack of houses, schools and hospitals. The shock provoked by this law, as well as the anger against Macron and his government, should be turned into a massive strike wave, including a general strike, against racist discrimination and oppression as well as against the government and the system it defends.