Paris (AFP)

Emmanuel Macron, who goes to Mayotte Tuesday, is expected on the issue of illegal immigration, a source of concern and anger for part of the population of this young French department where half of the inhabitants are foreigners.

The president comes to see the deployment of Operation Shikandra, a civil-military plan to fight illegal immigration.

In this archipelago of 374 km2, which became a French department in 2011, 48% of the 256,000 inhabitants are foreigners, according to INSEE, figures increasing compared to 2012 (40%).

This unprecedented ratio (the national average is 6.5% of foreigners) is the result of significant immigration from the Comoros, one of the poorest states in the world, including the nearest island, Anjouan, is located only 70 km from the Mahoran coast. According to INSEE, 95% of foreigners in Mayotte are Comorians.

Moreover, one foreigner out of two was illegal (around 66,000 people) in 2015, according to INSEE.

In recent years, the number of migrants from Africa's Great Lakes (DRC, Burundi, Rwanda) is also rising. And more recently, Sri Lankans have landed on the soil of the country.

This situation, regularly denounced by local politicians, led the territory to ignite several times.

In the spring of 2018, the Mahorais blocked roads for nearly six weeks, crippling traffic and the entire economy of the island.

They protested against this illegal immigration, among others, that they accused of being responsible for the insecurity and saturation of public services, especially the hospital (in 2017, three quarters of babies born in Mayotte had a foreign mother , according to INSEE) and schools (some classes operate by rotation for lack of places).

- "fragile equilibria" -

In a letter sent last week to Emmanuel Macron, the Collectif des citoyens of Mayotte, at the origin of the social movement, always underlines that "illegal immigration (which) is increasing at an accelerated pace (...) menac (e) ) the fragile balances we had and degraded (e) the environment, the education system, the health system and urbanism ".

The population is demanding more resources to stop regular arrivals of kwassas-kwassas, makeshift boats carrying migrants, often risking their lives.

To answer this, the government, which has already intensified the controls and the re-escorts to the Comoros for several months, set up in August the "Operation Shikandra" (name of a good-natured fish that bites when we approach its nest), including additional military and customs personnel, to reach 25,000 at the end of 2019.

This arrangement provides for consolidation of the fight at sea, with an increase in the number of intercepting vessels and better aerial surveillance.

According to the Elysée, on October 1, 22,000 renewed at the border have already been recorded (against 15,000 in 2018).

The government has also intensified controls against hidden work and the destruction of informal settlements.

But for the MP LR Mansour Kamardine, these measures are "notoriously insufficient", "the Mahorais expect a rapid and consistent strengthening of human and material resources to fight against insecurity and control of borders". Because "to solve the problem of immigration is a prerequisite to advance on the economic and development issues" of Mayotte.

In a proposal for a law, it suggests increasing the length of stay in France to 36 months instead of 18, allowing a foreigner residing in Mayotte to apply for family reunification.

Even in the LREM camp, the mayor of Mayotte Ramlati Ali judged during the debate on immigration to the Assembly "necessary to toughen certain criteria for access to stay," calling to "Mayotte to the Mahorais".

The asylum-immigration law of September 2018 has already adapted the law of nationality to Mayotte by requiring a minimum of three months of presence in the national territory of one of the parents for a child to be able to claim nationality.

And the administrative detention center has a derogatory status, with a statutory period of detention before the seizure of a judge of freedoms and detention of five days, against 48 hours in mainland France.

© 2019 AFP