by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk:
French president Emmanuel Macron passes hardline immigration bill supported by Marine le Pen. She declares victory. Macron’s Health Minister resigns causing a political crisis.
France Political Crisis
Please note France Passes Controversial Immigration Bill Amid Deep Division in Macron’s Party.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
The French government is facing a political crisis after the health minister Aurélien Rousseau offered his resignation in protest over a hardline immigration bill.
The bill was originally intended to show that Macron could take tough measures on migration while keeping France open to foreign workers who could help the economy in sectors struggling to fill jobs.
His interior minister Gérald Darmanin had argued that the bill “protected the French”, saying the government had to take tough measures on immigration in order to stem the rise of Le Pen’s anti-immigration far-right National Rally, which is now the single biggest opposition party in parliament and polling in first position ahead of next year’s European elections.
Sacha Houlié, a key figure on the left of Macron’s party, who had led the special committee on the law, voted against it.
Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration, far-right National Rally party, said her party would vote in favour of the bill, calling it an “ideological victory”. The far-right MP Edwige Diaz described the bill as “incontestably inspired by Marine Le Pen”.
Elsa Faucillon, the communist MP, said the government was using the same words and ideas as the far-right, and going further than Giorgia Meloni in Italy.
It is “the most regressive bill of the past 40 years for the rights and living conditions of foreigners, including those who have long been in France,” about 50 groups including the French Human Rights League said in a joint statement.
Cyrielle Chatelain, a Green MP, told parliament there was a feeling of “shame and betrayal” that Macron had instead brought in the ideas of the far-right with this bill.
Trumpism and the Kiss of Death
The BBC asks Has Marine Le Pen Given Emmanuel Macron the ‘Kiss of Death’?
French President Emmanuel Macron may have won a law on immigration, but has he lost his soul?
The accusation is being made at after a dramatic day in French politics which saw the presidential party given what one newspaper called the “kiss of death” by Marine Le Pen’s hard right.
Swallowing the harder-line version of the immigration law was bad enough for many in President Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and its allies.
What became unendurable was the coup pulled by Ms Le Pen as the vote in the National Assembly approached on Tuesday afternoon.
Out of the blue she announced that the toughened-up version of the law was now quite satisfactory thanks to the pressure of her 88 deputies. [note: very awkward BBC sentence reorganized, no words change].
More than that, she claimed it was an “ideological victory” because for the first time an immigration law would recognize the principle of “national preference” – long a cherished goal of her National Rally party.
Manon Aubry of France Unbowed called the law the “most xenophobic in French history” and the Greens’ Yannick Jadot said it marked the arrival of “Trumpism” in France.
What’s in the ‘Trumpism’ Bill?
- Delays foreigners access to state subsidies like housing aid or family allowances for several months or even years
- Toughens family reunification rules for immigrants
- Forces children born to foreigners in France to request French citizenship upon reaching adulthood, rather than having it granted automatically
- One-year, temporary residency permits under some conditions for skilled workers in fields experiencing labor shortages
Cracks Exposed
The above excerpts from the New York Times article Fractious Immigration Vote Exposes Cracks in Macron’s Alliance
Nearly a quarter of lower-house lawmakers in President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition abstained or voted against a proposed overhaul. Government leaders denied a revolt was underway.
Nearly one quarter of lawmakers in Mr. Macron’s own centrist coalition in the lower house of Parliament didn’t support the bill, either by voting against it or abstaining.
“These are things that have been fundamental to the far right for years, which we never would have dreamed of taking up,” Gilles Le Gendre, a lawmaker and former head of Mr. Macron’s party who voted against the bill, said in an interview. “But the right, inspired by the extreme right, added many elements that weren’t in the original law, and that presented major problems of principle.”
Sacha Houlié, another lawmaker in Mr. Macron’s party and the leader of Parliament’s powerful law committee, called parts of the final law “excessively mean” in an interview with RTL radio.
Marine Le Pen, the parliamentary leader of the far-right National Rally, gleefully declared the law “a great ideological victory for our movement,” and her fellow lawmakers voted unanimously for it.
Events in France are strikingly similar to events in the US.
For more on the EU, please see EU Integration Stopped and Is Now Headed in Reverse
Coming up shortly, I will compare and contrast what’s happening in France with the border mess in the US.
