“National Priority”: “Immigration Law Marks Accentuation of Pre-Existing Logic, but also Form of Disruption”

Emmanuel Blanchard is a historian and lecturer in political science at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He especially published History of Algerian immigration to France (Discovery, 2018). It places the law passed on Tuesday, December 19 in the line of texts “restraint” from Immigration has voted for forty years and shows how questioning land rights or national superiority is on the far right.

The recently passed “immigration” law is the twentieth in forty years. Does it stop with the previous one?

The first break in this text is due to the legislative conditions and the political configuration of its adoption. Beyond the programmatic and ideological inspiration that Marine Le Pen welcomed, this law was passed by the votes of the National Rally (RN). In addition, potentially unconstitutional provisions were deliberately included. This is a new phase in a more general movement to challenge fundamental rights.

In 1984, the law establishing the “Card [de résident] for ten years” they voted. This is the last major law that improves the conditions of stay of foreigners. Since then, it has been the main goal of immigration laws Withholding, Suspicion and Repression. We certainly observed the swings of the pendulum when the left was in power, but without a full return to the previous, more favorable situations. The fact is that the law passed on Tuesday is one of the most repressive in the last forty years. It can be compared to the “Passover Laws” of 1993, hailed by Eric Ciot’s Les Républicains (LR) party.

Why is the analogy made with the “Pascus Laws”?

This rapprochement is primarily due to a shared spirit: it is a law that prevents immigration and, when he was Home Secretary, Charles Pasqua said the aim was “zero immigration”. In addition, a number of provisions apply to these Pascual years [1986-1988, 1993-1995]. This is particularly true of the article which calls into question the law of the land and imposes a condition of “will” on foreign parents of children born in France to obtain French citizenship. The July 1993 Law Pasqua-Méhaignerie also reformed the Nationality Code and introduced the “manifestation of the will” clause, which was repealed by the March 1998 “Guigu Law”.