ADDS REMARKS FROM INTERIOR MINISTER, LAWMAKERS
By Nur Asena Erturk
ANKARA (AA) – The French president will send the immigration law to the Constitutional Council on Wednesday for review, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The parliament passed into law the controversial immigration bill late on Tuesday, fracturing the political majority.
President Emmanuel Macron will transfer the law to the Constitutional Council which will review and validate it, spokesperson Olivier Veran told a news conference in Paris.
Health Minister Aurelien Rousseau's resignation was accepted, and there is no "ministerial revolt" over the law, he added.
Several other ministers had threatened to resign if the bill was adopted on Tuesday.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, author of the disputed immigration project, told reporters late Tuesday that the bill was adopted without the votes of the far-right party National Rally (RN), according to broadcaster BFMTV.
"The majority was large," Darmanin said, meaning that the bill would pass into law even without the RN's votes.
Darmanin sparked a new debate within the opposition that claimed the law was adopted with the National Rally's support.
Left-wing MP Raquel Garrido said on X early on Wednesday: "If the National Rally voted against, the bill would not be adopted. Factual. Arithmetic."
Left-wing lawmaker Mathilde Panot told broadcaster Franceinfo on Wednesday that the government "used National Rally's votes and National Rally's ideas to adopt the worst law ever seen" in France's migration history.
- Most 'xenophobic' law in France's history
Left-wing member of the French and European parliaments, Manon Aubry, denounced on X the "most xenophobic law" of France's history.
Mathilde Panot called on President Macron not to sign and promulgate the law during an interview on Franceinfo, and she described the law as an "attack on fundamental rights."
One out of four lawmakers in President Emmanuel Macron's camp didn’t vote in favor of the bill, daily Le Figaro reported on Wednesday.
Far-right leader and Macron’s rival, Marine Le Pen, hailed the bill, calling it "a great ideological victory for our movement."
- Parliamentary process
The first version of the bill was passed on Nov. 14 by the Senate and scheduled for debate by the lower house members starting on Dec. 11.
Green groups submitted a motion to dismiss the bill which won 270-265, with the support of opposition parties, including left- and right-wing factions, and the bill was thus de facto rejected.
But then the government formed a joint committee of seven senators and seven MPs who found a consensus between the majority and the opposition, with a reviewed version of the text.
After the Senate’s passage of the revised text on Tuesday, MPs mostly voted in favor of the bill.
The Constitutional Council will now verify the text's validity, and the law will enter into force once it is published in the Official Gazette.
- Immigration bill
The bill aims to harden the family reunification process, suppressing state medical assistance and requiring French proficiency as a condition for a residency permit, among other measures.
Article 3 of the draft law was the most debated and is related to giving a one-year residency permit under certain conditions to irregular foreign workers who operate in "sectors under tension" – sectors that suffer labor shortages.
Darmanin said previously that the law "would help better integration and better expelling."