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Fillon to review chess prodigy deportation

Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Friday he would review the case of a Bangladeshi boy who is France's under-12 chess champion and is threatened with expulsion because he lives here illegally.

Published: 4 May 2012 16:37 CEST
Fillon to review chess prodigy deportation
European People's Party

“Naturally this young man, if he is a chess champion, merits that his case be examined with the greatest attention,” Fillon told France Inter radio when asked about the status of 11-year-old Fahim Alam.

Alam arrived illegally in France in October 2008 with his father and in 2010 was issued with an order to leave the country. 

He was sheltered for a time by an immigrant help group and currently lodges with families from his chess club in the Paris suburb of Creteil.

Alam won the junior French championship last month and would be able to join the national team in tournaments abroad if he had valid travel documents, according to the French Chess Federation.

Federation official Jordi Lopez said that Alam had the right to join the national team because he met the criterion of being enrolled in a French school.

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IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

Published: 20 September 2023 09:06 CEST
France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

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