LR deputies sent a 36-page argument to the Sages to defend the immigration law. On the left, protest rallies will be organized on Sunday.
Defenders of the immigration law and its detractors are suspended from the decision of the Constitutional Council which will fall on January 25. On the right, we are worried that key articles of the text will be rejected because they are deemed unconstitutional. On the left, on the contrary, we hope for maximum censorship. In the meantime, no one is sitting idly by. According to Le Parisien, the Les Républicains party sent a 36-page memorandum to the Sages on Thursday, January 18, intending to demonstrate that the text goes “as far as it is possible to go within the existing constitutional framework.”
The left is not left out. A delegation of Nupes deputies was heard by the Constitutional Council on Tuesday January 16 to deliver its point of view on the immigration law. The battle will continue in the streets on Sunday January 21. In a column published in Libération on Friday January 19, more than 300 elected officials from the left – socialists, communists and even ecologists – called on the French to demonstrate against the text.
Among the signatories several mayors of large French cities: Anne Hidalgo (PS councilor of Paris), Johanna Rolland (PS councilor of Nantes), Gregory Doucet (EELV mayor of Lyon), Martine Aubry (PS councilor of Lille), Eric Piolle (elected EELV of Grenoble), Patrice Bessac (communist mayor of Montreuil) or even Carole Delga (PS president of the Occitanie region) and Stéphane Troussel (PS president of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hundreds of elected officials denounce a law which “criminalizes undocumented people by reestablishing the offense of illegal residence”, “restricts access to social benefits and housing” and “violates the principles resulting from the French Revolution with the reinstatement of cause of land law.”
The adoption of the immigration bill is none other than a “cultural victory for the extreme right under the pleasant exterior of ‘at the same time'” according to the signatories of the platform. All also assure that the text “will in no way prevent illegal immigration, nor will it allow the return to their country of people on national territory”, but will deprive “people whose status is perfectly legal, who work and contribute ” of their rights.
The elected representatives of the left therefore meet the French in the streets on Sunday January 21. With this appeal, they add their voices to those of the 201 signatories of a previous column published in Médiapart and L’Humanité at the beginning of January and which already called for rallies against the immigration bill on January 21. The supporters of the first forum who see in the so-called asylum-immigration text “a dangerous turning point in the history of our Republic” also come, for some, from the political world, but others are artists, intellectuals, journalists, union or association representatives. The former Defender of Rights from 2014 to 2020 Jacques Toubon, the bosses of different unions – Sophie Binet of the CGT, Marylise Léon of the CFDT, Laurent Escure of the UNSA or even Benoît Teste of the FSU – and presidents of associations fighting against poverty or racism are behind this platform.
