[extropy-chat] Re: riots in France

[Amara Graps]

I suggest to take a look here:

http://www.brook.edu/fp/cusf/analysis/immigration.htm


Immigration Policy in France
U.S.-France Analysis, January 1, 2002
Virginie Guiraudon, National Center for Scientific Research


The latter part is particularly relevant:

==================================================================

By the early 1990s, even though immigration in all categories of legal
entries had fallen, Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme-right National Front
party was attracting a significant portion of the electorate with its
demagogic demand to expel Muslim immigrants from France. Politicians
across the political spectrum responded by arguing in favor of
"immigration zéro," and the right-wing coalition that came into power
in 1993 translated the principle of zero immigration into policy. The
"Pasqua law" of 1993, named after French interior minister Charles
Pasqua, sought to stem the remaining legal flows in a variety of ways:
by prohibiting foreign graduates from accepting job offers by French
employers and denying them a stable residence status, by increasing
the waiting period for family reunification from one to two years, and
by denying residency permits to foreign spouses who had been illegally
in the country prior to marrying.

These repressive measures rendered formerly legal migration flows
illegal. Thus today, in spite of a partial regularization of
undocumented aliens in 1997, there are still many people living in
France known as inexpulsables-irrégularisables. This group-including
rejected asylum-seekers from countries to which it is not safe to
return, and foreign parents of French children-cannot be expelled, yet
is not eligible for residency permits. They epitomize the
contradictions of liberal democracies in the face of migration
pressure, caught between respecting the human rights and norms
embedded in domestic and international law, and an electoral logic
that leads politicians to adopt a restrictive stance towards
immigration.

The 1998 Law on Immigration

When Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin came into office in 1997,
he chose the prominent political scientist Patrick Weil to write a
report, L'immigration et la nationalité, that laid the groundwork for
a new immigration law adopted in 1998. Weil argued that the 1993
Pasqua law deterred foreign students and young professionals from
settling in France. It thereby deprived the country of a source of
human capital and undermined its national interests in the global
competition for the brightest minds. Weil?s policy recommendations
were in fact inspired by the American model, in particular the US visa
provisions for highly skilled immigrants. The 1998 law on immigration
created a special status for scientists and for scholars. Further
measures introduced that year aimed at easing the conditions of entry
for certain highly skilled professional categories. Computer experts
earning more than 180,000 FF per year, and highly qualified temporary
workers earning more than 23,000 FF per month, both benefit from a
simplified procedure and, if they obtain a one-year permit, can
request family reunification. Despite these reforms, France still
appears to lag behind the United States, Germany, and the United
Kingdom in its quest for highly skilled mobile labor.

Three years after the 1998 law on immigration and residency, France's
political left and right appear to have agreed not to disagree on
immigration, at least at the national level. The new consensus still
privileges the restrictive function of immigration policy. And the
emerging EU regime on immigration and asylum, negotiated by national
interior and justice ministry bureaucrats, is also characterized by a
general policy of restrictiveness. Yet, as the East Sea episode has
shown, policy instruments such as visas and carrier sanctions that
seek to prevent "unwanted" migrants from reaching Europe?s border have
not stopped their arrival. They have instead criminalized the
migration process itself, and raised the demand for smuggling networks
and their lucre. France and the European Union today are witnessing
the same perverse effects that the US experienced along its Mexican
border, where new restrictions in some states only redirected flows to
others, and raised the price of illegal passage.

==================================================================

The part of France's policy regarding professionals is particularly
interesting to me. I have a report in Italian from a workshop I
attended last May about the 'Brain Drain' (from Italy, France, other
EU countries), that I need some time to translate to understand more.
I would like to know if France makes it easier or harder than Italy
for skilled immigrants because at least France distinguishes skilled
from unskilled workers; Italy does not. I'm in exactly the same
illegal immigrant category in Italy as those that sneaked in by boat
from Africa. Italy's present immigration policies, like France's were
formed by extreme right ring factions (Fini.. former Fascist Party)
of Italy's government.


Amara

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
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Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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