Macron Administration Prepares Major Immigration Reform Bill for France

Emmanuel Macron intends to implement his campaign proposals, including new conditions for granting long-stay residence permits and the creation of a single asylum agency with the merger of Ofpra and Ofii. "The President of the Republic is working on an important text on immigration," learns the newspaper La Croix from the entourage of the reappointed Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, whose department has warned that the precise and special announcements on this subject would come a little later. This law will include "a change in access to naturalization," according to "measures in line with what was said during the campaign," we are told. Due to the "too many appeals" that have become, the Head of State had announced that he wanted to strengthen the means to remove foreigners rejected from their asylum application. He had also promised "faster and more effective" procedures so that "the rejection of asylum will mean the obligation to leave French territory [OQTF]". His wish: "the overhaul of the organization of asylum and the right of residence to decide much faster who is eligible and expel more effectively those who are not".

In addition to the text on immigration, the Ministry of the Interior has also specified that it is working on a "single asylum agency with the merger of Ofpra and Ofii on a German-style model". The mission of Ofpra is to process asylum applications, that of the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii) is to take care of the granting of housing and allowances to recognized refugees, but also the management of other procedures, such as family reunification, the foreign sick stay, voluntary return... Mathieu Tardis, a researcher at the French Institute of International Relations, notes that it is a French peculiarity to have two organizations. "In most European countries, there is an immigration agency that does everything," he explains.