Friday - April 07, 2006

Shopping For Cheap Labor In France

Hmmmm, let me see, mon ami ... I’ll take three of those Poles, one Romanian and you may dispose of those Algerians over there. We do not need any more of them, n’est ce pas?

The French are finally realizing their open door policy is a miserable wreck. Minister Sarkozy is giving it his best shot. I like the quote about “cannot continue to welcome people whom we have neither jobs nor housing to offer.” Well, that’s a no-brainer. It’s too bad they didn’t think of it 40 years ago. Then again, here in America we’ve just about filled our quota of gardeners, cooks and toilet cleaners - what are we going to do with more Mexicans if they continue to pour in?

France Wants to ‘Choose’ Its Immigrants
_{April 7, 2006, 4:15 AM EDT}

PARIS (AP)—The curtain falls on a bevy of near-naked dancers in feathered headdresses, and Adir Rafael Pires glides into action. As a set-changer at the Lido, the racy cabaret on Paris’ Champs-Elysees, Pires could not be farther from his desert birthplace: Cape Verde, a rocky, drought-stricken archipelago off West Africa’s coast. But the door that allowed Pires to make France his home may now be closing. France, like other European countries, is taking a harder look at the immigrants it lets in.

The drive toward “selective” immigration is inspired by electoral politics, by fears that some immigrants are not integrating and may even be vectors for terrorism and militant Islam, and by widely shared concerns that immigrants overtax welfare systems and compete for scarce jobs. French Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy championed a bill that would make it more difficult for poor immigrants with little education and few skills to start a new life in France—long one of Europe’s most coveted destinations for immigrants.

Pires, 24, reached the ultimate goal—acquiring French nationality—at a naturalization ceremony last month after spending more than half his life here—much of it as an illegal immigrant. Hi mother, Vitalina, came to France in 1990 on a tourist visa, then stayed on as a live-in maid with a Parisian family. Pires visited her for summer vacation, and never returned to Cape Verde. Nearly sixteen years later, mother and son became French thanks to a provision that allows foreigners to apply for citizenship after 10 years in the country—even if they were here illegally.

That is one of many immigrant-friendly provisions that would be scrapped under Sarkozy’s immigration bill. Sarkozy, whose father immigrated here from Hungary, argues that France should take a more pro-active approach to immigration by hand-picking foreign workers. His arguments gained resonance after riots ripped through heavily immigrant French suburbs last fall. Sarkozy acknowledges that he wants to court voters away from the far right, which argued that the riots showed the perils of immigration.

If passed, the law would form part of France’s multi-pronged offensive against clandestine immigration that also includes stepped-up border controls and deportations. Under Sarkozy, deportations have increased 72 percent over the past two years, with a record 20,000 illegal immigrants expelled in 2005. “France cannot be the only country in the world that refuses to adapt its immigration policy to its economic needs and its capacity to absorb new arrivals,” Sarkozy said recently. “We cannot continue to welcome people whom we have neither jobs nor housing to offer.”

- More Fwench Fun In This Story Here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 04/07/2006 at 07:26 AM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons •  
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