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Between generosity and toughness

Vaiju Naravane

In France, opposition is growing to the police storming schools to pick up children of illegal immigrants.

"YOU CAN call these Gandhian methods — passive resistance through civil disobedience. I know what I am doing is illegal. But my conscience will not allow me to go along with an unjust law. And I am not alone. There are thousands like me in France." Severine Gallo has iron-grey hair and a teacher's severe, school-marmish face that is transformed when she smiles. It's a wide open smile, full of genuine human warmth. But Ms. Gallo is not smiling now.

For the past three weeks she has been busy organising an association of parents and concerned citizens in the small rural community where she lives to hide school children from being picked up by the police for deportation with their illegal immigrant parents.

"This has been happening quite regularly. I know of several cases where policemen have barged into schools traumatising pupils and forcibly carrying away those children whose parents have no residency papers. We cannot allow that to happen," she says passionately. French schools are obliged to take in children regardless of whether they are in the country legally. Government supporters say that blanket regularisation of all pupils from "paperless" families will encourage illegal immigration.

On June 30, the French Parliament approved a divisive new immigration law, proposed by the ultra-right wing Interior Minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, which attempts to change current immigration flows by opting for "selective immigration" — welcoming qualified foreign workers and clamping down on poor and unskilled immigrants. The Government believes there are between 200,000 and 400,000 illegal immigrants in France and is planning 26,000 deportations this year.

Between 50,000 and 100,000 children of parents without papers are in the French school system, according to RESF, the French acronym for a network of associations and individuals called Education Without Borders.

On July 1, a day after the expiry of a Government moratorium on the expulsion of school-age children of illegal immigrants, Ms. Gallo travelled to Paris with six other people from her village to participate in a massive demonstration. Several prominent artists, writers, film and theatre personalities have joined the protest with ceremonies to sponsor children threatened with deportation.

The rally was organised by RESF and a group calling itself United Against Disposable Immigration. Protesters carried banners reading "No to the hunting of children." Similar demonstrations were held in cities like Marseilles, Toulouse, Nantes, Strasburg, Brest, and Lyon.

"We have a few children in our village who fall into this category. Their parents have been here a long time and they are honest, hardworking people. What is the point in expelling them? They are here, well integrated and working hard. We need them. Why throw them out and why send policemen to schools to hunt down children? We hid Jewish children from the Vichy police and the Gestapo during the Second World War. How can we tolerate such practices," asks Ms. Gallo in a voice that quakes.

The children are from families who entered France illegally and who would normally be expelled along with their parents. But campaigners say that most of them know no other country and that deportation would be inhumane.

Buckling under public pressure and with his eye on presidential elections now just 10 months away, Mr. Sarkozy (whose father is Hungarian) said that some families might be allowed to stay on "as an exceptional and humanitarian measure, in the interest of the children." He then appointed a prominent Jewish lawyer, Arno Klarsfeld, himself the son of France's most celebrated Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who was kept hidden as a child to escape deportation to Nazi death camps, to mediate in the dispute. Arno Klarsfeld said there would be no immediate deportations of children. "Families have till August 13 to lodge a dossier. There will be no child hunt ... there will be no expulsions this summer," he declared.

Prefects — state-appointed governors — have been told to examine individual cases and grant temporary residence permits to families in accordance with certain criteria. But associations defending the immigrants say this could be a trap to flush out illegal migrants from their hiding places. The association SOS-Racisme declared: "We are convinced that the criteria for judging and treating individual cases will not only be arbitrary but also unjust if their fate is left in the hands of prefects." Nevertheless, several immigrant families have decided to take the risk, and there are huge daily queues at police headquarters — unending lines that form in the early hours of the morning and never appear to diminish.

The Government's informal moratorium on expulsions came into force last June following pressure from the public but it has now been lifted since the school year has ended. The new immigration law creates a different type of residence permit — named a "skills and talents permit" — for foreigners with qualifications considered important for the French economy and labour market. At the same time it increases curbs on migrants moving to France to join their families, as the majority currently does.

Foreigners will be allowed in only if they can earn an income. The foreign spouses of French citizens will now have to wait longer for residence cards — a move designed to combat convenience marriages. And migrants will be forced to sign an "integration contract" committing them to respect the French way of life.

The law also scraps regulations that previously allowed illegal immigrants to obtain French documents if they succeeded in living in the country for 10 years. Now their cases will be dealt with on an individual basis by the authorities.

The law has prompted a strongly hostile reaction from the left-wing opposition, human rights groups, the Catholic Church and some African countries. Critics say it risks creaming off the most talented people from countries where they are badly needed and will make life harder for ordinary migrants. "Keeping the best and sending back the worst is not exactly Christian," said Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon.

Despite Government promises to the contrary, the deportations policy continues. On June 30, the lawyer for a Turkish Kurd family with seven young children — the youngest born in France — said a deportation order had been issued against the family. And the Mayor of the central city of Poitiers ordered the evacuation from an abandoned school of 42 illegal immigrants who have been on hunger strike since May 29.

French officials now say that thousands of illegal immigrant families with children enrolled at French schools are to be given legal status. "We know that we are going to grant residency papers to several thousand" families, Paris police chief Yannick Blanc said in an interview.

But this sudden generosity on the part of the French public masks a greater drift towards extremism and xenophobia. Opinion polls show that anti-immigrant parties such as the National Front led by Jean Marie Le Pen are getting stronger by the day and pollsters do not completely rule out the possibility of a second round presidential run-off between the right and the extreme right in a repeat of the 2002 scenario that won Jacques Chirac his second term as President.

"There are two issues here. The first concerns children who are already here and being schooled in France. Their plight tugs at the heartstrings and brings forth acts of generosity such as sponsoring families. But the second, much larger issue is one of illegal immigration and the type of immigration policies we should adopt to combat that. You will find the same persons who are hiding children today become extremely tough when future immigration is mentioned. There is immense confusion in the French mind over this question which I predict will become one of the key issues in next year's electoral campaign," said Eric Zemmour, commentator for the conservative daily Le Figaro.

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