France Pulls In Its Welcome Mat

...Girls believe that being able to make their own choice will help them resist parental pressure against adopting the living styles of their French counterparts...

...In the past, several thousand "phony" marriages are thought to have taken place each year...

...And applications for marriages between French citizens and illegal immigrants are receiving close scrutiny...

...Judging from their discussions of the matter with journalists, teachers and researchers, quite a few genuinely welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that they want to be French, instead of having citizenship automatically granted to them...

...Foreigners living in France have about 50,000 children each year (the figure peaked at over 70.000 in the early 1980s...

...The anti-immigration law includes steps quietly taken by a succession of Socialist Prime Ministers—particularly Michel Rocard, who declared that "France cannot welcome the misery of the whole world," and Edith Cresson, who said she saw nothing wrong with expelling illegal immigrants "by the planeload" if necessary (as...

...a Communist has called it "an incitement to hatred...

...Today's immigrants tend to come from North Africa and black Africa...

...Altogether France is estimated to have 4 million foreign residents, plus 350,000-500.000 illegals...

...Outbursts against Arabs and black Africans have been far fewer and much less violent than those against Italians and Poles at the beginning of this century...

...How the authorities will dispose of these cases no one has said...

...Pasqua agrees with a Socialist parliamentary deputy who has observed that "so long as our plate is fuller than theirs, they will keep on coming...

...During the past two months, Pasqua had taken a hard line, insisting that the Constitution would be reformed whether or not the President approved, by referendum if necessary...

...Now she washes dishes in a restaurant and feels free at last...

...A crisis may have been averted...

...These Socialist administrations sought to placate the party's left wing, already shocked because of their turn toward privatization on the economic front, by strenuously giving the impression that they were not actually trying to close France's borders...

...In Senegal," says Demba, "they look upon me as French, while over here the police pounce on me unless I wear a suit and tie...

...The London-based Institute for Jewish Affairs points out in its annual report that anti-Semitism tends to increase wherever restrictions on foreigners are introduced...

...The ruling has made a sudden pro-European of Pasqua, who opposed the Maastricht Treaty last year...

...Implicitly, though...

...welcome the chance to establish a clear-cut identity...

...Any person persecuted for his action in favor of freedom," the preamble states, "has the right to asylum on the territory of the Republic...

...Well attuned to public opinion, Charles Pasqua, the tough Interior Minister, declared that France would aim for "zero immigration...

...Fatima would have been stuck in Algeria simply because circumstances would have prevented her from complying with a new condition: Children born in France of foreign parents will become French citizens only if they formally apply between the ages of 16 and 21...

...Asylum-seekers are being carefully screened...

...Two rather extreme clauses were scrapped after much Centrist lobbying...

...Back in Morocco they call us migris, the immigrants...

...Not all countries welcome their nationals' offspring born abroad, however, and some, such as Morocco, are loath to accept those expelled elsewhere...

...Thus it is more difficult than hitherto for foreign workers and students to bring over their families...

...The Interior Minister believes cutting down the influx of outsiders should be coordinated with a development project for the Third World financed by 1 per cent of the seven richest countries' gross national product...

...The biggest wrench the Council tossed into Pasqua's handiwork was its finding that the preamble to the 1958 Constitution requires French authorities to consider the requests of every individual seeking asylum...

...One would have deprived illegal immigrants of the right to basic health care...

...Pasqua's indignation is shared, albeit more mildly, by Simone Veil, the Centrist Minister for Health and Urban Affairs...

...indeed Pasqua had done when he was Interior Minister in the 1986-88 "cohabitation" government of Jacques Chirac...

...The only way to achieve integration is by controlling immigration...

...The relationship has also irritated many Socialists, who can be heard muttering over-simplistically that Mitterrand was forced to choose between human rights and Europe...

...Nevertheless, the new legislation has been criticized by political parties on the Left, churches and civil rights organizations active in the immigrant communities, such as SOS-Racisme...

...foreigners by birth, may cease to be so by choice...

...Italians...

...asked one of the drafters of the Napoleonic Code in 1802...

...Interestingly, the new restrictions do not seem to worry most teenage children of legal immigrants...

...Spaniards, Portuguese, and others...

...On the frontier with Spain, police arrested a man trying to smuggle his drugged daughter out of the country, presumably to marry her to someone in Algeria...

...For the question it raises is, does France feel it can trust its partners on human rights issues...

...Pasqua's left hand knows what his right hand is doing: In addition to the new nationality code designed to reduce the number of future French citizens born of foreign parents, a second statute was voted in June to curb the rate of new arrivals...

...ask irate civil rights organizations...

...A further wrinkle is that Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece are estimated to have nearly 1 million illegal immigrants among them...

...Among other things, it is feared that the latest strictures will swell the number of illegals in the country...

...conversely, someone refused entry in one country will not be allowed in by a neighbor, except under special circumstances...

...On October 7, after discussions with President Francois Mitterrand, Prime Minister Edouard Balladur sent the Council of State a proposed amendment that would permit France to apply the Schengen agreement and yet not renounce its traditional "right to provide asylum...

...If the Council of State deems the amendment acceptable, it must next be ratified by a joint session of the Senate and the National Assembly...

...Ten years later, she managed to leave her husband and return here with her two small sons...

...What if they forget...

...For Aziz, far-Right hatred and Muslim fundamentalism are the twin enemies of integration...

...Boys...

...According to the agreement, anyone allowed into one EC country may freely travel throughout the others...

...He was supported by the leader of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic Party, Jacques Chirac, who has been irked by the entente cordiale between Mitterrand and Balladur...

...Paris Fatima was born in France, but at the age of 16 she was taken to Algeria by her parents and married to a middle-aged man...

...He cheerfully acknowledges that opting for a French passport won't change the color of his skin, but he thinks it will improve his status in everyone's eyes...

...Frankly doubting whether countries like Greece or Portugal have attained the same degree of sensitivity to human rights as France, Fode Sylla, the president of SOS-Racisme, has urged the establishment of "a European office to protect refugees and stateless persons...

...Meanwhile...

...With this "compromise" solution, Mitterrand and Balladur have once again demonstrated their joint determination to avoid a political crisis—to the dismay of quite a few of their respective allies...

...Under France's new nationality code, approved this past June...

...Since Germany and Holland have tightened their immigration legislation, France could end up with transit camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers refused entry elsewhere in the EC...

...But many Socialists are privately relieved to see the issue being tackled by a Center-Right government...

...Since 1850 France has steadily embraced Poles...

...That has obliged the government to soften the measures relating to marriage, the detention of illegals, and an immigrant's right to be reunited with spouse and children...

...notes Aziz...

...All three are French citizens...

...A Socialist deputy has described the anti-immigration law as "two fingers of far-Right racism in a glass of democracy...

...Lawbreakers and polygamous men face the loss of their residence cards and expulsion...

...But in the process political opportunism has muddied a much-needed, and still unresolved, debate on a sensitive and controversial issue: To what extent can a society try to shape its future without losing its soul...

...A "Westernized" teenager was murdered this summer by her Turkish relatives...

...France no longer wants to be a land of immigration, [except for] those persecuted in their countries: This is a French tradition...

...the latter, with extended households, many of them polygamous, have risen in number from 80,000 to perhaps 300,000 in 15 years...

...Of greater concern is the situation of youngsters who have gotten into trouble...

...The former number between 2 million and 3 million...

...If they have been sentenced to six months or more in prison, they will be barred from citizenship and expelled to a theoretically home country they may never have visited...

...Opponents of the June law cheered up when the Constitutional Council, a group of magistrates charged with judging the constitutionality of legislation, canceled several clauses and expressed "reserves" on others...

...In his view, the Council's stand goes against the Schengen agreement on the free circulation of people inside the European Community (EC), due to come into effect soon...

...As long as French nationality was a birthright, the newborns ensured their parents' right to remain in the country: "Why should we refuse those who have so many reasons to feel drawn to this happiest of climates and who...

...Yet in the abstract, public opinion seems to have difficulty coming to terms with a gradual shift in the ethnic makeup of the country, which some fear will undermine France's cultural identity...

...In fact, as they pursue the routines of daily life the people from different communities coexist relatively smoothly...

...the second would have allowed police to question anyone "presumed to be foreign...

...On September 23 the Council of State, a consultative body to whom the government had presented its problem, suggested that the Constitution be amended to cover France's international agreements on matters of asylum without altering the preamble...

...In 1992, 450,000 people applied for asylum in Germany alone, and some 100,000 applied in the rest of the community...

...Several said they hoped the prospect of losing the right to live in France would have a sobering effect on peers who are apt to be dazzled by the apparent affluence of drug dealers and other streetwise toughs they see hanging around their high-rise apartment buildings...

...She, too, considers the Council's ruling anti-European...

...Gradually, he trusts, this will weaken racism "among the French as well as in the other communities—they're just as bad...