France announces tightening of immigration controls

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin today announced tightened controls on immigration, part of his government’s response to France’s worst civil unrest in four decades.

Legal immigrants who ask for a 10-year residency permit or French citizenship should show that they have integrated and mastered French, he said.

France will crack down on fraudulent marriages that some immigrants ue to acquire residency rights and launch a stricter screening process for foreign students, de Villepin said.

Both de Villepin and his Interior Minister and rival Nicolas Sarkozy have announced law-and-order measures since the rioting broke out this month in depressed suburbs where many immigrants live.

The two men – both members of President Jacques Chirac’s conservative party – are expected to vie for the presidency in 2007, and both want to appear firm in response to the violence and France’s broader social problems.

Marriages celebrated abroad between French people and foreigners will no longer be automatically recognised in France, de Villepin said. Consulates must screen couples first before foreign partners can be granted French identity papers, he said.

“It’s not an attempt to undermine the right to marry, but to check that all the conditions for a true marriage are in place,” de Villepin said, adding that the measure would be adopted by parliament in the first half of 2006.

The prime minister also said the government should have the ability to enforce a law outlawing polygamy. There are 8,000-to-15,000 polygamous families in France, according to official figures.

Some French officials cited polygamy as one reason that youths from underprivileged immigrant households joined the rioting – a suggestion that outraged opposition politicians and human rights groups. They warned against fanning racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

The violence broke out on October 27 near Paris and spread throughout France. While promising to ease unemployment for youths and fight racial discrimination, the conservative government also promised tighter controls on crime and immigration.

About 50,000 foreign students come to France each year to study. Foreign students will be screened in their home countries by centres run by officials from France’s Education Ministry, de Villepin said.

“We want to channel our efforts to receive the best students, the most motivated, those who have a high-level study project,” he said.

The French president said two weeks ago that France also must be stricter in enforcing regulations that govern whether immigrants can move their spouses and children to France.

De Villepin said legal immigrants who want to move their families to France should wait at least two years before they can apply, up from the current one year.

So-called family reunions are the second biggest source of legal immigration to France, affecting about 25,000 people in 2004. Marriage is the largest: About 34,000 French people married foreigners from beyond the European Union last year.

De Villepin later told parliament that the number of illegal immigrants sent back has more than doubled over the past three years, with France on target to deport more than 20,000 people this year.