Macron Urges Tough Stance on Immigration Ahead of Parliamentary Debate

A few days before the parliamentary debate on immigration, scheduled for September 30 and October 2, President Emmanuel Macron is playing the card of firmness. He was, on Monday, September 16, in front of some 200 deputies and senators from LREM, MODEM and allied parties, as well as the entire Government.

On this occasion, the French Head of State specified, for more than an hour, his four priorities: ecology, pensions, work and the "sovereign", that is to say security and immigration, reported participants in this closed-door meeting.

From this perspective, President Macron noted that "entry flows have never been so low in Europe and asylum applications have never been so high in France". Based on this observation, he hammered that his supporters and he have no right not to face this issue", hence the firmness.

In the same vein, the French number 1 deplored the fact that the right of asylum is diverted from its purpose by networks, people who manipulate it. "If we don’t face it, we’ll suffer it. What does that give? Neighborhoods where the number of unaccompanied minors is exploding," he warned, according to a participant.

"The question is whether we want to be a bourgeois party or not," he told his supporters, before nuancing that the bourgeois have no problem with this. They don’t cross it but the working classes live with it.

"The left didn’t want to look at this problem for decades. The working classes have therefore migrated to the far right. We’re like the three little monkeys: we don’t want to look," he implied.