France to restrict jobs for foreign workers
Macron toughens position on non-eu migrants and limits access to health care to appease the far-right
FRANCE is to introduce annual quotas for non-eu migrant workers as president Emmanuel Macron attempts to toughen his stance on immigration to ward off the far-right.
Starting next year, authorities will earmark industries in need of qualified staff, and make it easier to hire foreigners, said Labour minister Muriel Penicaud. “This is about France hiring based on its needs. It’s a new approach, similar to what is done in Canada or Australia,” Ms Penicaud told BFM TV.
Other measures to be unveiled by Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, today include suspending health care for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants for their first three months in the country.
The government also says it wants to stamp out “health tourism”, particularly from Albanians and Georgians, who don’t need visas for the Schengen passport-free zone. “Lots come to get healthcare. They know it’s free,” a ministerial source told Le Monde.
Many French people feel there are too many foreigners in the country, which received a record 122,743 asylum requests last year, up 22 per cent from the year before, while most EU members saw a drop in numbers.
The measures come as polls suggest that Mr Macron’s main political rival in the run-up to 2022 presidential elections remains Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally. A survey out this week saw her gain 45 per cent of voter intentions in case of a run-off with Mr Macron compared with 34 per cent in 2017. The pair would be neck and neck in round one.
Currently, employers have to justify why a French citizen cannot be hired in an arcane process, which resulted in around 33,000 economic migrants being granted visas last year. Its list of sectors lacking national candidates has not been updated since 2008.
While France’s unemployment remains at 8.5 per cent, there are shortages of people willing to accept low-paid work in construction, hotels and restaurants, and some retail sectors. There is also a dearth of qualified national candidates in areas from the IT and engineering industries to vets.
French conservatives tentatively welcomed the quota plan. “It’s an idea we have defended for many years, so I won’t say it’s a bad idea,” said Aurélien Pradié of the conservative party, The Republicans.
Critics say the professional quota system is pointless as economic migrants only represented a tiny slice of the 256,000 people handed legal stay permits last year. Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist Party, said the measures were “politically cynical, scandalous on a humanitarian level and reckless in terms of public health”.
Laurent Berger, head of the CFDT, France’s biggest union, said the government was needlessly “waving the red flag” on immigration and that denying migrants health care for three months would have “disastrous consequences for the people concerned, for social workers, volunteers in charities, people in health centres”.