France to Tighten Immigration Policies, Impacting Moroccan Nationals

During a meeting with 21 prefects of departments, held on Tuesday at the Place Beauvau, Bruno Retailleau presented his plan to reduce immigration. This session follows the one that brought together all the prefects, during which the Interior Minister outlined his five priority axes: immigration, security, political Islam, the territorial state and civil security. To achieve his goal of reducing immigration, in a context of continuous increase in residence permit applications, particularly related to student, professional and humanitarian immigration, Retailleau announced two circulars: one aimed at regulating the action of the prefectures and the other aimed at limiting regularizations.

Regarding the first circular, the minister "asks the prefects to account to him and provide him with dashboards on the increase in expulsions and the decrease in regularizations," confided to the newspaper Le Monde a prefect who attended Tuesday’s session. As for the second circular, it aims to reform the "Valls circular" of 2012, the application of which has favored the issuance of residence permits to nearly 30,000 people per year, due to their private, family or professional life. The new text will be "shorter and clearer," Retailleau promised, who remained silent on the law aimed at facilitating the regularization of workers in shortage occupations.

The Interior Minister also emphasized "mastery of French" and "assimilation of French values" by candidates for regularization. He also intends to deploy a "migration diplomacy" to reduce immigration, like Italy which has established cooperation with Tunisia, through which many migrants transit. In the same vein, Retailleau plans a coalition with Italy and Germany to revise the European Union’s "return" directive. The minister also announced his intention to extend the duration of detention in France. To this end, he has asked the prefects to appeal against the decisions to release a foreigner who may pose a threat to public order.