Bid to end automatic rights to nationality

FRanCe’s main opposition party has proposed ending automatic nationality rights to anyone born in the country, challenging a long-cherished tenet of immigration policy as it seeks to address concerns of rightleaning voters.

Immigration is dominating political debate in France before next year’s local elections, with the controversial deportation last week of a teenager of Roma origin the most recent case to grab national headlines. separately, the interior ministry said yesterday that it would soon overhaul asylum arrangements.

Unlike neighbour Germany and many other european countries where blood ties are major determinants of nationality, France holds the concept of nationality based on jus soli, or “right of the soil”, as one of its treasured values

UMP president Jean-Francois Cope, a protégé of ex-president nicolas sarkozy who could run for president in 2017, said he would introduce a bill to parliament by the end of the year to cancel automatic nationality for children of illegal immigrants.

“Children born in France to parents illegally on French soil cannot automatically become French,” he told reporters. “It’s incomprehensible and it’s hardly seen anywhere else in europe.”

his proposal echoed those of the far-right national Front (Fn), which has long pushed for sweeping immigration reform, such as stiffening the naturalisation process, systematic deportation of illegal immigrants and a drastic reduction in the number of legal immigrants allowed into France.

The Fn is capitalising on record-low voter satisfaction with socialist president François hollande and discontent with the mainstream UMP ahead of municipal and european elections next year.

The recent victory of an Fn candidate over his UMP rival in a by-election in the south-east underlined the party’s expanding appeal among disgruntled voters.