"We have the figures for 2022, again a broken record", affirmed on LCI the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau while France registered 137,000 first asylum applications last year, a sign according to him that "we are in the midst of migratory disorder".

The bill which arrives Wednesday in the Council of Ministers "will not change the situation", because it "does not allow to regain control, control of immigration", added the senator.

Bruno Retailleau notably attacked the "stressed occupations" residence permit for undocumented workers provided for by this bill (which also wants to toughen expulsions), believing that "we are going to create a new regularization process massive".

But "if we don't regain control, the French will tell us, and there will be insurgencies at the polls very soon", he added, alluding to Sweden where "the extreme right is at the gates power".

"If there is a subject on which the French would not support pretending, it is really the question of immigration", abounded Olivier Marleix in front of the journalists of the parliamentary press.

While Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said he was open to dialogue with the oppositions and "particularly" those "on the right", the boss of the LR deputies assured that his party "will not lend itself to a communication exercise pretending to settle the matter".

With 62 deputies, LR holds the votes missing from the majority to have a text adopted.

"Gérald Darmanin may try to find an old UMP or LR card, that's not what will make us change our minds", he added, accusing the Minister of the Interior ( himself from LR) to "reel" on expulsions.

Calling for "not to veil the face" on "social" immigration (supposedly motivated by questions of insurance or allowances, editor's note), he quipped: "France is + the place to be + when one is a migrant, you know you are welcome".

Olivier Marleix, like Bruno Retailleau, vilified the "at the same time" in this area.

"I considered that there was a majority in the National Assembly to vote for a very right-wing text" but "obviously it scares the government very much, so they made a text that does not look like much", said he added.

For her part, Marine Le Pen denounced "a total deregulation of an immigration that has become anarchic".

If she "will vote for the individual measures that can go in the right direction", she judged that the project is not "at the level of the problem".

© 2023 AFP