France Tightens Rules for Residence Permits, Creating Backlog

In a circular sent in January to the prefects, the French Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, asked them to tighten the conditions for the regularization of foreigners in an irregular situation. Jean-Michel Delabre, a member of the League of Human Rights (LDH), reports that "18,000 application files for exceptional admission to residence" are on the table of the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture, referring to "recent abuses" affecting both undocumented immigrants and foreigners in good standing.

On the one hand, there are "those who fail to obtain a residence permit even though they have been in the process for almost a year and a half to two years", and on the other, those whose regularizations under the exceptional admission to residence are blocked due to the Retailleau circular, explains this human rights defender in an interview with the newspaper L’Humanité, who deplores the fact that "the files no longer give rise to any appointments, nor to any issuance of titles".

In reality, the Retailleau circular is complicating the lives of thousands of undocumented foreigners awaiting regularization in France. Among them are employees, parents of students, spouses of foreigners in regular situations, high school students, etc. All these people who were hoping to regularize their situation under the exceptional admission to residence "see this prospect receding considerably", indicates the activist of the League of Human Rights.

For their part, the prefectures inform the foreigners concerned that they will have to file a new file before obtaining satisfaction, explains Jean-Michel Delabre. But, he specifies, these new files will be studied "no longer under the title of exceptional admission to residence, but under common law, with much more limited chances of obtaining a residence permit". In fact, these foreigners find themselves in "an unbearable situation of social precariousness. They know that they risk a refusal of residence, which is automatically accompanied by an OQTF".