"No one is at the helm any longer. France is undergoing immigration that it no longer chooses. It is urgent to regain control," said the right-wing candidate in front of some 200 people gathered in Marck-en-Calaisis (Pas -de-Calais).

Its policy will be based on "two principles": "to decide who can settle on its soil and who must leave its soil", and that immigration "meets" the needs of France and not the other way around.

Sending back to back the "xenophobes" and the "right-thinking", who compete for "simplistic solutions", and criticizing President Emmanuel Macron who "dodged the question", the president of the Hauts-de- region France proposed to "put an end to the current system of regularization" and to "dismantle the camps of illegal migrants", like the "jungle" of Calais, dismantled five years ago.

He promised to revise the Constitution by referendum so that each year "Parliament sets immigration quotas", and to reduce family immigration as a priority by imposing a "republican passport" certifying mastery of French and respect for the principles. "secularism, equality" and "primacy of republican law".

He also suggested expelling "any foreigner sentenced to prison at the end of his sentence".

Against illegal immigration, Mr. Bertrand proposed a "triple border policy".

With the countries of departure, he pleaded for the "creation of a Mediterranean alliance" and threatened to deprive of visas the countries which refused to "cooperate".

At European level, he wished to "ban all admission" to the Schengen area.

At the national level, he defended an "emergency migration law for the safe removal" of illegal immigrants.

Undecided

In an allusion to the putative far-right candidate Eric Zemmour, he warned against "the temptation of hatred".

"To consider that such a religion or such first name would be enough to disqualify (...) it is madness. There are perfectly integrated foreigners and there are those who do not respect our country, let’s not be wrong in the fight”, he said.

His speech was followed by a brief incursion into the room of some demonstrators calling for an end to the expulsions of migrants, with a banner reading "stop harassment".

The activists interviewed by AFP who came to listen to Xavier Bertrand were still undecided on their choice in 2022, or even at the LR congress, if they could participate, which must decide at the beginning of December five right-wing candidates for the presidential election.

The candidate for the LR nomination Xavier Bertrand during a meeting in Marck-en-Calaisis, in Pas-de-Calais, November 4, 2021 DENIS CHARLET AFP

Marine Ringo, 25, sales representative in the region, no longer has her LR card because of "divisions" and is still "in complete uncertainty" for 2022.

She says she has been attacked "three times by migrants" and does not know if she will vote LR.

"Eric Zemmour is not one of my convictions, but the more I listen to him the more I like him" she says, even if she finds him "too radical".

His father Christian Ringo, retired, former RPR activist, who voted Marine Le Pen in the first round in 2017 and abstained in the second, is "undecided" but he hopes that Mr. Bertrand will go to the congress, otherwise he will vote "Dupont -Aignan or Zemmour ".

Cédric, a teacher in Calais, who voted Macron in the second round in 2017, does not know if he will vote for Xavier Bertrand but certainly not for Valérie Pécresse "too Parisian" or Michel Barnier "above ground" by his European past.

Stéphane is not an activist at all and has heard about the meeting on social networks.

"It's the immigration part that interests me, it kills businesses," says the merchant from Marck, who voted white in 2017.

Only Benjamin, 28, a farmer, took his LR card to vote Bertrand "without hesitation" at the congress, because he "does what he says, we have seen him in the region".

© 2021 AFP