France Counts 10.000 Algerian Illegal Immigrants

The French Senate, which is the second chamber of parliament, rejected a revised version of the Immigration and Refugee Act and declared a deep disagreement with the National Assembly (Chamber I).

The main disagreement was the recent refusal of the National Assembly to reduce the visa quotas for the countries which do not cooperate in the deportation of its nationals “illegal immigrants”, led by Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Mali and other countries.

French Senate said, in a report, dated July 31, that a parliamentary report on immigration and asylum law, which was approved by the French National Assembly, did not reach a consensus with the First Chamber of Parliament on the bill, and therefore it was rejected by the Senate and returned to the National Assembly.

We read in the report that the Senate rewrote the text of the law in a way that allows for greater emphasis on immigration control and aims especially to tighten the additional sanctions that are related to the prevention of illegal immigrants who were deported to enter the French territory.

According to a ranking of the French Senate, Algerians are the second largest community “illegal immigrants” on the French soil with a population of more than 10,000.

According to the same report, the difference was also in the reduction of the visa quota granted to nationals of less cooperative countries with regard to the deportation of their nationals “Harragas” from France.

“The disagreement was in the reduction of the visa quota that is granted to nationals of the countries that do not cooperate with regard to the deportation of their nationals “illegal immigrants” from France”.

“The text aims to reduce the number of visas that are granted to countries that hinder the expulsion of their nationals by refusing to issue consular passports to enable them to return homeland”, the report said.

At this point, the report of the French Senate classified Algeria as one of the first non-cooperative countries in this area, and in its claims in 2017, only 45% of the consular passports that were requested by the French authorities to deport the Algerian illegal immigrants from their territory were issued.

“In 2016, Algeria handed over only 48% of the consular passports to the deported “illegal immigrants” that were requested by the French authorities”.

The report also ranked countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Mali in the least cooperating countries.

The National Assembly dropped Article 11 in the new Immigration and Refugee Law, which provides for the reduction of the quota of states that are classified as non-cooperative in the deportation of their nationals “illegal immigrants” by not issuing their consular passports, such as Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and considered this to be related to diplomacy, and this article can not be retained.

French Ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driencourt, has said that there will be no reduction in the number of Algerians from the visa, referring to Article 11 that was dropped from the immigration law, but the coming days are promising new developments after the opposition of the Senate to drop this article and asserted that it as an effective step in combating Illegal immigration.