French Farmer Fights to Keep Moroccan Worker Facing Deportation

Abdel Allaoui, a 29-year-old Moroccan whose residence permit has not been renewed, is threatened with expulsion. Yet this man who arrived in France in 2015 has a valid employment contract. For two years, he has been working on a farm in the Drôme region. His boss is not indifferent to his situation. "With this decision of the prefect, they are taking away my best worker who is perfectly integrated into local life, in the municipality, and today, he has to go back to Morocco? We don’t understand this injustice because what’s the point of struggling and working 14 hours, 15 hours a day, meeting demand, customers for such a disaster?" rages Alain Freyssin, a producer from Vaunaveys-la-Rochette.

He also said that the strawberry sector is suffering from a labor shortage in these Covid-19 times. "It’s not easy with the health crisis in France to find staff. We have a labor shortage," he confided to France bleu. Alain Freyssin says he placed an ad with Pôle Emploi. This was of no help. "I had about 60 responses, but nothing that went anywhere. Just people who had absolutely no foothold in agriculture, no notion of agriculture. [...] I can’t do everything alone. I need staff to help me and pick all the strawberries," laments the producer from Vaunaveys-la-Rochette.

He says he is determined to prevent the expulsion of Abdel, who has been living and working here for six years. "He can’t go back there, I want to make that clear to the administration, the only thing he has, when I see him at home, in his apartment, is just one suitcase, a small red suitcase. And if he has to leave, that’s all he has." The administrative steps he has taken so far have not yet allowed him to regularize his worker. He is then launching an appeal to the prefect of Drôme as well as to the LREM deputy of his constituency Célia de Lavergne. He has also involved his customers.