Moroccans Hindered by French Paperwork

It is difficult for OFII workers, named after the French Office for Immigration and Integration, to be recruited by farms in southern France. Each year, around 4,000 of them come to France to help with the harvest. At a farm in Grans, in Bouches-du-Rhône, around 58 seasonal workers, mostly Moroccans, arrive each year for the peach or cherry harvest.

To recruit these seasonal workers, farmers must provide proof of a need for labor and guarantee that the seasonal workers will have an employment contract and accommodation. “There is water, electricity, hot/cold air conditioning, indoor sanitary facilities; everything complies with the standards. We are inspected every year by the DDTM,” Pascal Bernard, a market gardener who has already received a visit from DDTM inspectors, explained to France 3.

To read: France makes it easier to recruit Moroccan seasonal workers

But for several months now, the OFII platform through which recruitment is carried out has been overloaded. The reasons are the longer delays in obtaining French visas for Moroccan seasonal workers and the increasing complexity of administrative procedures for farmers, following the application of the new order issued by the French Interior Minister and published in early January.

“It’s a huge headache; we are farmers, we are not in offices all day trying to get all this done. We would need someone whose sole job was to handle this all year round,” the market gardener complains. To overcome this difficulty, “the agricultural component must be separated from all the others, a platform must be dedicated to it, and visa approval must be streamlined,” suggests Jérôme Mazély, a member of the FDSEA 13 bureau.