The executive unveiled, Tuesday, December 20, a final version of the immigration bill he wants to pass, based on two pillars: the effectiveness of deportations and integration in France.

The text, sent to the Council of State on Monday, had hitherto mainly focused on measures to improve the rate of execution of expulsions, especially those of foreign offenders after months of controversy around the "OQTF", the obligations to leave French territory. 

A steering wheel counterbalanced above all by a symbolic measure: the creation of a residence permit "jobs in tension" to respond to sectors in shortage of manpower.

A rare novelty in the draft text consulted by AFP on Tuesday, the government also wants to create a residence permit for health professionals.

This new multi-year residence permit called "Talent - medical and pharmacy professions" concerns doctors "whatever their specialty", midwives, dental surgeons and pharmacists, specifies the text, carried by the Ministers of Health. Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and Labor, Olivier Dussopt.

According to its article 7, this card is intended for health professionals and their families "as soon as they are recruited by a public or private non-profit health establishment".

"This title aims to meet the need to recruit qualified health personnel", in particular because these foreign practitioners cannot always be hired at present, "for lack of a residence permit that fully meets the specificity of these situations", justifies the executive.

The text plans to condition the issuance of the title to an authorization from the regional health agency.

Its period of validity, from one to four years, will depend on the validation by the practitioner of the "EVC", the knowledge verification tests.

Promote evictions   

This bill "agrees to look at things in the face, with pragmatism and realism, in particular with regard to economic immigration and integration through work", declares Olivier Dussopt in an interview with Figaro posted online Tuesday evening.

"Some of the LRs have understood that we are making common sense proposals (...). Everything that the LRs have always asked for, we offer it", adds Gérald Darmanin, during this same interview.

The text, which must be presented to the Council of Ministers in January before being examined in the Senate and then in the National Assembly, was the subject of all-out consultations at the end of the year.

As indicated for several months by the government, the bill aims above all to promote the expulsion of foreigners who present a threat to public order, in particular through a "structural" reform of asylum and litigation for foreigners.

>> International Migrants Day: "If they deport me, it's my whole life that they screw up"

The executive also wants to authorize the "use of coercion for the taking of fingerprints and the taking of photographs of illegally staying foreigners" controlled at the borders, or even reintroducing a measure of the separatism law initially censored by the Constitutional Council in 2021 , to "make possible the refusal, withdrawal or non-renewal of certain residence permits" in the event of non-compliance with the "principles of the Republic", including gender equality, freedom of sexual orientation or even symbols of the Republic. 

These refusals to renew and the withdrawal of the resident card would also be possible "in the event of a serious threat to public order", underlines the text.

It also specifies the contours of the "short-term occupations" title, valid for one year, which must come into force "on an experimental basis" until December 31, 2026, after which a report will be sent to Parliament. 

The title will concern any foreigner in an irregular situation "who has carried out a salaried professional activity appearing in the list of trades" in tension "for at least eight months out of the last twenty-four months" and who has lived in France for at least three years. 

  With AFP

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