From one minefield into another.

Having emerged, battered but victorious from the national psychodrama over pension reform, President Emmanuel Macron is determined to push through a new law on immigration this Autumn.

Or maybe early next year.

Immigration has, it seems, become the new test of Macron’s minority government’s ability to govern.

A “hard-cop-soft-cop” change in French migration law (the 30th change in 40 years) was proposed almost a year ago. There have been nine false starts and changes of direction since then.

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The draft law was chopped in two, then glued back together. An amended version emerged from the Sénat but was never presented to the National Assembly.

The government says that a new text will be presented to parliament before the end of the year. There have been insistent rumours that President Macron is ready to strip the draft law of its soft-cop elements in an attempt to seduce the 62 swing votes of the centre-right.

If he does so, the government could be confronted with a serious split in its own centrist coalition. Left-leaning Macron supporters are ready to make immigration the battle-ground in which they – as they see it – prevent a slide of the governing alliance towards the Right.

Macron’s opponents sometimes accuse him of an “on-the-one-hand-and-on-the-other hand” attitude to solving problems. The immigration bill is a case in point.

The original draft law toughened procedures for the expulsion of illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers. It also promised work permits to some “sans papiers” (undocumented workers) in industries where labour is short.

Both parts addressed real issues.

Few of the illegal migrants or failed asylum seekers expelled from France leave the country. The government has little way of knowing whether the 120,000 people each year who are served with expulsion orders or OQTF’s (obligations de quitter le territoire français) go away or not.

The proposed law would change that.

At the same time (to use Macron’s allegedly favourite phrase), thousands of illegals already work secretly in France and do not pay taxes or have rights. Many more would like to find jobs.  

The proposed law would allow them to work legally in industries like construction and hospitality and eventually qualify for permanent residence.

The centre-right Républicains, the swing seats in a blocked parliament, have made it clear that they will vote against any law which includes work permits for illegals. If Macron uses his emergency constitutional powers to short-circuit the Assembly and impose the law, they say they will support a vote of censure and bring down Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s government.

According to media reports or deliberate leaks last month,  Macron is therefore ready to yield to the centre-right and dump the work-permits. On Monday of this week, the left-leaning part of the President’s coalition fought back.

Several senior Macronist parliamentarians signed an open-letter in the newspaper Libération with independants and moderate leaders of the Left. They called for the government to end a “hypocritical” and “Kafkaesque” situation in which France depends on the work of many thousands of illegal workers but refuses officially to recognise their existence.

Hypocrisy is the correct word. The anti-migrant discourse of the French Right and Far Right (increasingly indistinguishable) ignores the contributions of legal migrants to the economy and society. Illegal ones are portrayed as murderers, rapists or, at best, spongers.

At the same time (there I go again), all European countries do have to find some way of regulating the wave of clandestine migration and asylum-seeking from suffering countries in Africa and the Middle East.

The Far Right and the Right speak of France being “swamped” by “uncontrolled” and “mass” migration.

Swamped? Really?

Official net migration is under 200,000 people a year, including one in three from other EU countries. Those figures have increased only slightly in the last decade.  

Illegal migration, by its nature, is hard to quantify. Estimates given to a parliamentary committee this year suggest that as many as 200,000 people are entering France illegally each year. Some are sent home; others go on to other countries, including by small boat to the UK; many stay.

The permanent “illegal” population of France is put at between 400,000 (interior ministry) and 900,000 (former senior interior ministry official). This is hardly the “swamping” of a country of 68,000,000; but it does place a severe strain on some already struggling inner-suburbs of Paris and other French cities.

It therefore makes sense to allow some of the illegal residents already here to contribute to an economy which is desperately short of labour (on building sites, in care homes, and in restaurants).

No, say Les Républicains. That will only attract more clandestine migrants.

Yes, say the centre-left part of Macron’s centrist coalition. Unless you take a more “humanist” approach and recognise the contribution which illegals can make (and already do make) we will not support the “hard-cop” section of your draft law.

Result: an impasse.

Macron and Borne may decide to use their emergency powers under Article 49.3 of the constitution and push through the draft law in its “balanced” form. That would be a big gamble.

The weak and divided Les Républicains have much to lose from  bringing down the government and risking early legislative elections. And yet they have decided under their hard-right leader Eric Ciotti that the only way to recover their former glory is to match the anti-migrant rhetoric of the Far Right.

Macron has started a hare running about a possible change in the constitution to allow a referendum which could vote on another change in the constitution to toughen rules on immigration. That will go nowhere fast.

The blockage of the hybrid bill leaves two genuine problems unsolved. Failure to pass any kind of migration law will be a vote-loser against Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in difficult European elections next June.

The chances are that Macron and Borne will delay a showdown (again) until early next year in the hope that something will turn up.

It won’t.

At some point, President Macron is going to have to decide whether to abandon his own centre-left; abandon the law; or call the Républicains’ bluff and take a punt on Article 49.3.