Moroccan woman’s five years of work fail to prevent deportation order in France
A Moroccan woman who has lived in France since 2018 worked for nearly five years, mainly as a bakery sales assistant. Despite her employment, the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal has upheld her order to leave French territory, with the judges citing, among other things, several periods without work.
From January 2019 to April 2025, the Moroccan national worked in sales, mainly in bakeries. Her work history amounts to nearly five years of employment in total. But in an order issued on November 4, 2026, the Paris Administrative Court of Appeal ruled that this experience was not enough to justify exceptional regularization.
On Bladi.net : She gets her OQTF annulled, but when the prefecture reexamines her case, her job has disappeared
The judges examined the different periods during which the applicant was employed. After her first job, from January 2019 to January 2020, she worked in a bakery in March and April 2020, then from July 2020 to November 2021. She subsequently found work again from May 2022 to April 2025.
The breaks in her employment weighed in the assessment of her case. The court noted, in particular, months without documented work in 2020 and a break of about six months between November 2021 and May 2022. It acknowledged her desire to integrate, but found that her employment record was too unstable to constitute exceptional grounds for regularization.
Born in 1986, the Moroccan woman says she arrived in France on May 27, 2018. In August 2023, she applied for a residence permit as an employee. When the prefecture did not respond, she took the matter to court and, in December 2024, obtained the annulment of the implicit refusal of her application. The Paris Administrative Court then ordered a reassessment of her situation.
That reassessment led to another refusal on April 11, 2025, accompanied by an order to leave France within thirty days. The administrative court upheld the decision the following September.
The case also falls under the 1987 Franco-Moroccan agreement, which governs the issuance of employee residence permits to Moroccan nationals. The court noted that the prefect retains the power to grant exceptional regularization, taking into account factors including length of employment, job stability, qualifications and the applicant’s personal circumstances.
On Bladi.net : France Regularizes Workers in Shortage Occupations, but a Franco-Moroccan Agreement Closes the Door
The applicant also cited her relationship with a French national since 2022 and the presence of an uncle, an aunt and cousins in France. The judges noted that she did not live with her partner, had no dependent children and retained family ties in Morocco, where her brothers and sisters live. They therefore dismissed her appeal and upheld both the refusal of a residence permit and the OQTF.
