Several thousand opponents of the immigration law took to the streets of Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon and elsewhere in France on Sunday, January 14 to demand the "total withdrawal" of the text and "maintain the pressure" before the decision of the Constitutional Council on January 25.
"Immigration law, racist law. We don't want it, we're fighting it," chanted several thousand demonstrators in the capital who braved the cold by setting off from the Place de la République, AFP reported.
"We demand the outright withdrawal of the law. We came to France to work, we are not delinquents," said Mariama Sidibé, spokesperson for the collective of undocumented immigrants in Paris, a former home help now retired.
"It's a racist law, made to keep us in precariousness and criminalize us, this mobilization is only the beginning," added Aboubacar Dembélé, of the collective of undocumented workers in Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne).
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New call for demonstrations on 21 January
More than 400 collectives, associations, trade unions and political parties had called for a demonstration against a text that "takes up many ideas of the extreme right".
"Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin tells us that this text would be necessary to protect us from the far right. But then, in order not to have Marine Le Pen, he is applying Marine Le Pen's program, it's insane," said Marc Cecome, a former public transport mechanic who marched in Marseille with 2,500 people, according to the prefecture.
Adopted by Parliament on 19 December, the text restricts the payment of social benefits for foreigners, introduces migration quotas, calls into question the automaticity of the right of the soil and re-establishes an "offence of illegal residence".
"We don't expect anything from the Constitutional Council's decision: it will probably remove certain articles, but we are asking for the total withdrawal," said Denis Godard, a leader of the Solidarity March.
In Lyon, between 2,300 people (according to the prefecture) and 3,000 people (according to the organizers) marched to demand the same "withdrawal".
In Bordeaux, too, there were two to three thousand people, according to AFP journalists. Placards in the shape of human faces denounced critical situations: "We have been working and paying our taxes for two years. My family will no longer receive child benefit."
Prior to the decision of the Elders on 25 January, a new call for demonstrations against the law was launched by more than 200 personalities for 21 January.
With AFP
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