France Poised To Curtail Algerian “Quota” Of Visas

The French authorities have introduced an amendment to the Immigration and Refugee Act so as to reduce the number of visas granted to nationals of countries that have been staying illegally in French territory and are not cooperating adequately with Paris for their repatriation, a measure that can affect Algerians for several reasons.

The first consideration that can be assumed is the state of tension that prevailed in the visa file in the last period between the two countries, through the statements of the French Ambassador in Algeria Mr. Xavier Driencourt last April, when he revealed that ten thousand Algerian “harraga” are still present in Paris after they “burned” the visa duration granted to them, in addition to a host of Algerian state officials, who posed in France as “harraga” so as to benefit from free social and health care in France and left debts of up to 10,000 Euros, as he put it.

In recent times, many Algerians have complained about the denial of their visa files by French consulates, including journalists, doctors and others, although they had previous visas that had expired.

In a statement to the Director-General of the French border company Vernon Gontier, the official confirmed that Algerians are the second largest nationality group present in an illegal situation on French soil with more than 10,000 people.

He also indicated that Algeria is among a few countries cooperating in the field of handing over deportation permits to its citizens. This was stated in the report of the deputy to the Constitutional Law Committee of the French Senate, François Noel Béfé.

In this report, presented last November 23 in the French Senate and read by “Echorouk”, we noted that the Algerian consulates in France refuse to hand over more than half of the requests for deportation to their citizens because of the latter’s overstay in France as submitted to them by the French authorities.

According to the same Senator who serves as the vice-chairman of the Constitutional Law Committee in Siena, for example, in 2016, Algeria granted only 48 percent of the consular permits to its nationals, 17.2% were granted to Egypt and 11.8% to Mali. Algeria is not cooperating by about 52 percent, it stated.

The findings of the report of the deputy of the Constitutional Law Commission in Siena suggest that Algeria indirectly rejects the deportation of 52 per cent of its nationals required to quit French territory.

The same report pointed out that the failure of a country to cooperate adequately with regard to the granting of consular permits to be returned to their country will lead to a reduction in the number of granted visas for both short term period (less than 3 months) and long-term (more than 3 months).

The same senator also underscored that Algeria froze its negotiations with the European Union to sign a similar agreement to deport its citizens by granting them the required consular licenses.

In 2017, according to official figures of the Embassy of France in Algeria, the percentage of rejection of files for Algerian applicants reached 37 percent, as the total number of requests amounted to 650 thousand, while 413 thousand visas were thereby granted to Algerians.