Keeping Quiet About France

Recently I subscribed to the French newspaper LeMonde. It was partially because I just completed an article about the 2005 Paris riots and also because I am still trying to learn to read French and thought a daily newspaper link would move me a long a little faster.

This morning there was a brief note about cars being burned in Toulouse. When I looked in other newspapers I didn't see anything. The London Guardian didn't say anything. So tonight I googled Toulouse cars burned and found the following article. Apparently on New Years Eve 2009, over 1,100 cars have been burned throughout France, a 30% increase over New Years Eve 2008. Another bit of news; while the potential bomber on the Amsterdam/Detroit flight made big news, the sticks of dynamite placed in a Paris department store just before Christmas didn't stir up the news....

See:

More than a thousand cars torched on New Year's Eve, France24 RFI, January 1, 2010

Dynamite Found at Paris Store, WaPo, December 16, 2009

A Silent March after Burning 60 Cars

link to photo












A young man dies in what is believed to be a drug related confrontation in northeast France on Saturday night (14th). Sixty police officers were dispatched as dozens of cars were burned. People connected this confrontation with the French riots in the Banlieue in 2005. Right wing Marine La Pen Marine criticized Sarkozy for having soft position on security, which Marine believes led to the riot.

On Sunday, the 15th, a group held a silent march in response to the killing. Le Figaro newspaper states that about 50 people attended, however in the photo from the march (above) it appears to have been a higher number.


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Agence France Presse -- English
June 15, 2008 Sunday 2:54 PM GMT

French youths clash with police after shooting
LILLE, France, June 15 2008

Dozens of French youths clashed with police in a town in northeast France overnight, burning cars during a rampage triggered by the killing of a 22-year-old man, an official said Sunday.

Two police officers, two firefighters and five residents suffered minor injuries during the violence that raged until Sunday morning in Vitry-le-Francois, said Sylvaine Astic from the regional prefect's office.

Armed with baseball bats and firebombs, about 50 youths went on a rampage, torching cars and setting fire to garbage bins in the town of 17,000 people, Astic told AFP.

The violence started around 10:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) after the 22-year-old man was gunned down in Vitry-le-Francois. A suspect was arrested overnight.

About 60 police officers were dispatched to the town late Saturday and remained in Vitry-le-Francois on Sunday.

A police union issued a statement denouncing what it termed as "hysteria" in relations between French youth and police.

"This started out as a murderous settling of scores," said Nicolas Comte of the SGP-FO police union.

"But quickly this tragic event prompted a violent group to attack police with baseball bats and molotov cocktails as young bystanders watched passively, like spectactors to the 'riot show'," said Comte.

He linked the latest outbreak to the 2005 suburban riots, France's worst unrest in decades, when poor immigrant-heavy areas around Paris and other major cities exploded into three weeks of violence.

"Nothing has been resolved since. The fire is still burning under the ashes," said Comte.

About 250 people took part in a silent march in Vitry-le-Francois on Sunday, led by the victim's mother who wept as she walked holding a photograph of her son through the low-income neighbourhood of Rome-Saint-Charles.

The last time there was major rioting was in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel in November when two teenagers riding a motorbike died after they collided with a police car. The incident led to three days of riots.

More than 100 police officers were injured in Villiers-le-Bel when rioters armed with hunting rifles and pellet guns opened fire, a new, worrisome turn in the ongoing clashes with police in the suburbs.

from Lexis Nexis

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Le Figaro

Vitry-le-François : le meurtre serait lié à la drogue

C.J. (lefigaro.fr) avec AFP et Le Monde
16/06/2008 | Mise à jour : 22:23 |

Le suspect a reconnu avoir un «différend portant sur plusieurs milliers d'euros» dans un trafic de cannabis avec le groupe qu'accompagnait le jeune homme abattu samedi.

Une confrontation sanglante liée à un trafic de cannabis. Les enquêteurs lèvent petit à petit le voile sur le meurtre, samedi, à Vitry-le-François d'un jeune homme, abattu d'une balle dans la tête par un ancien militaire, et dont la mort avait provoqué une nuit d'affrontements entre jeunes et forces de l'ordre. Le suspect, âgé de 22 ans, a reconnu avoir tiré sur la victime et expliqué avoir un différend concernant un trafic de cannabis avec le groupe de jeunes auquel appartenait la victime, a affirmé le procureur de la République. Cette querelle portait sur «plusieurs milliers d'euros».

Le meurtrier présumé, qui a été déféré au parquet lundi, « se sentait harcelé, menacé et il s'est rendu à ce rendez-vous avec une carabine 22 long rifle», a indiqué la magistrate. L'ancien soldat n'aurait toutefois pas visé la victime. Il a ainsi «répété» pendant sa garde à vue, «qu'il ne connaissait pas Mohamed». Des explications qui vont dans le sens du témoignage d'un des proches de Mohamed qui confiait au Monde, que son ami avait été fauché par «une balle perdue». «Mohamed a voulu séparer deux types qui se battaient», a-t-il assuré. Le procureur a pour sa part affirmé qu'on ignorait tout du rôle de la victime, inconnue des services de police et « appréciée de tous »...

for link to complete article click here

Obama and the Banlieue

June 17, 2008

"...the percentage of blacks in France who hold university degrees is 55, compared with 37 percent for the general population. But the number of blacks who get stuck in the working class is 45 percent, compared with 34 percent for the national average..."


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New York Times
June 17, 2008
For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

PARIS — When Youssoupha, a black rapper here, was asked the other day what was on his mind, a grin spread across his face. “Barack Obama,” he said. “Obama tells us everything is possible.”

A new black consciousness is emerging in France, lately hastened by, of all things, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. An article in Le Monde a few days ago described how Mr. Obama is “stirring up high hopes” among blacks here. Even seeing the word “noir” (“black”) in a French newspaper was an occasion for surprise until recently.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, 60 cars were burned and some 50 young people scuffled with police and firemen, injuring several of them, in a poor minority suburb of Vitry-le-François, in the Marne region of northeast France...

This black consciousness is reflected not just in daily conversation, but also in a dawning culture of books and music by young French blacks like Youssoupha, a cheerful, toothy 28-year-old, who was sent here from Congo by his parents to get an education at 10, raised by an aunt who worked in a school cafeteria in a poor suburb, and told by guidance counselors that he shouldn’t be too ambitious. Instead, he earned a master’s degree from the Sorbonne.

Then, like many well-educated blacks in this country, he hit a brick wall. “I found myself working in fast-food places with people who had the equivalent of a 15-year-old’s level of education,” he recalled...

The surge in popularity of Mr. Obama among French blacks partly stems from the hope that his rise “will highlight our lack of diversity and put pressure on French politicians who say they favor him to open politics up more to minorities,” Mr. [Pap] N’Diaye said. “We in France are, in terms of race, where we were in terms of gender 40 years ago...”

[N’Diaye] laid out some history: French decolonization during the 1960s pretty much pushed the original négritude movement to the back burner, at the same time that it inspired a wave of immigrants from the Caribbean to come here and fill low-ranking civil service jobs. From sub-Saharan Africa, another wave of laborers gravitated to private industry. The two populations didn’t communicate much...

for complete NYT article click here

French Police search the "intimate parts" of rights activist

The title of this post may seem vulgar, but I believe it needs to be very clear, so that everyone who reads this will understand what happened to rights activist Fatimata M'Baye at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris.

The article mentions that these actions are part of Sarkozy's stringent anti-immigration measures. Has this happened in the U.S. but hasn't been reported?

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Activist says threatened, stripped by French police

Reuters
Tuesday, March 25, 2008; 4:40 PM
Washington Post

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - A Mauritanian rights activist said French police threatened her, strip-searched her and detained her for 24 hours for protesting at the treatment of an illegal migrant being deported.

Fatimata M'Baye, head of the Mauritanian Human Rights Association, said around 20 police boarded her flight on March 11 and threatened to beat her and doctor Pierre-Marie Bernard after they complained about the condition of the shackled Mauritanian, who was being forcibly restrained by officers...

M'Baye, a lawyer and a Muslim, said she was subjected to an invasive strip-search and was considering legal action... "The most painful part of this affair was the body search. I was stripped completely naked and they searched my intimate parts, without any reason. It was humiliating. I consider it like a rape," M'Baye said...

for link to complete Reuters/WP article click the title of this post

What! Sarkozy for Affirmative Action?

Sarkozy is attempting to show some compassion for the young people of the banlieue. After many say he provoked the riots of 2005, he now seems to be trying to make amends - or either, his actions are more of a publicity stunt in response to his recent decline in popularity after his recent highly publicized romance and marriage.

Just a note, the following article describes Sarkozy as "the son of a Hungarian immigrant." - his father was a high-flying aristocrat who immigrated from Hungary. The father left Sarkozy, his brother and their mother when the French president was four years old.

The International Herald Tribune noted that well respected cultural critic and former equal opportunities minister Azouz Begag '"accused Sarkozy of once threatening to assault him. Begag recounts an episode, just after the wave of unrest in France's suburbs in late 2005, in which he criticized Sarkozy for using the word "thugs" to describe young delinquents. Begag said he received a phone call from Sarkozy, who, enraged, called him a "disloyal bastard," adding, "I'm going to smash your face."'

I wonder what Begag thinks about Sarkozy's latest initiative to help the banlieue.
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Sarkozy Offers Plan For Immigrant Areas
Education, Jobs, Security Emphasized

By John Ward Anderson and Corinne Gavard
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 9, 2008; Page A09

PARIS, Feb. 8 -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday unveiled an ambitious plan to revitalize the country's riot-scarred suburban slums with new housing, education and jobs programs and tougher police enforcement, saying France had to eradicate discrimination and provide better security for all of its citizens.

"Whatever your origin, whatever name you have," he told an immigrant-heavy crowd of close to 1,000 guests at the Elysee Palace, the presidential residence, "whatever the color of your skin, wherever you live -- if you work, you can gain access to every position of responsibility, including the very highest." Sarkozy himself is the son of a Hungarian immigrant.

"We will no longer have young people who are foreigners in their own country," he declared.

He did not attach a price tag to most of his proposals or say how he would pay for them. That left many critics concluding that his plan for remaking and healing France's heavily immigrant suburbs -- the country's 16th renewal plan in 31 years -- would fare no better than the others.

"There is not one euro in this plan for the suburbs," complained Fran¿ois Pupponi, the Socialist Party mayor of Sarcelles, just north of Paris. "It is not a plan for the suburbs. It is the outline of what a plan for the suburbs could be."

Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, a political and social scientist, said Sarkozy's plan did have elements in common with the failed plans of the past, but she gave the president high marks for approaching the problem in a different way, even if the funding seemed "slim."

"Urban politics since the 1990s in France had always focused on construction, thinking that giving a new shape to the suburbs would change their inhabitants," she said. "It is interesting that this plan stresses the human factor rather than housing. It shows a clear evolution, a positive one."

African and Arab immigrants complain that they face systematic discrimination in France, even though many are citizens. Unemployment among youths in their suburban neighborhoods often approaches 40 percent. Their anger bubbled over in three weeks of rioting in 2005 that left more than 8,000 cars torched.

During his presidential campaign last year, Sarkozy promised a "Marshall Plan" for the suburban ghettos. Numerous organizations and social activists boycotted Friday's launch event. Some called it a political stunt to help Sarkozy's party in municipal elections next month, while others argued that it was inappropriate to inaugurate a ghetto revitalization scheme from among the gilded panels, bacchanalian tapestries and crystal chandeliers of the Elysee Palace.

But Eiji Ieno, 21, the co-founder of a film association that works in the suburbs, said holding the event in the president's home was a positive gesture. "It is a way to show that we are not left aside anymore. He invited us, it's a first step. Now we'd like to know if there will be concrete measures behind these announcements," Ieno said. "I just hope that he'll do what he says."

Sarkozy, who at the time of the 2005 riots was interior minister, was blamed for inciting the rioters by calling them "scum" and threatening to clean them out with an industrial power hose. His tough law-and-order posture was credited with helping him win the election last year, and he has rarely ventured to the suburbs since taking office. Rioting briefly erupted in some Paris suburbs again last fall, which many analysts said showed little had been done to improve conditions.

Sarkozy returned to his tough law-and-order themes Friday. "The first obligation of the state is to assure the safety of citizens, and the first right of any citizen is to be safe," Sarkozy said, pledging to hire 4,000 more police officers for the suburban neighborhoods in the next three years. Many citizens in the communities complain of gang violence, and Sarkozy said that "as of tomorrow, we will be waging a pitiless war against those who are involved in smuggling drugs and those who consume drugs."

He tempered his comments with a blunt recognition that France does not provide equal opportunities or services to minorities. He ordered his cabinet ministers to develop three-year plans to provide equal public services for all.

Sarkozy said a key goal was to eliminate the sense of isolation in suburban towns caused by poor transportation links with surrounding communities. In one of the few initiatives that carried a price tag, he said the government would earmark 500 million euros (about $735 million) for new tramway and bus service between the communities.

Sarkozy said private business would soon begin a program to recruit, train and mentor "several thousand" youths from the suburbs, while the government would create 30 "centers for excellence" in the communities for the best teachers and students.

Financial support to local communities "will be significant," Sarkozy pledged. Among other initiatives, he called for a program that would enable people in government housing to become co-owners of their homes. He said the state would establish "second-chance schools" to lure high school dropouts back to the classroom.

"Let's do away with the debate on positive discrimination," Sarkozy said, using the French term for affirmative action programs, which are illegal here. "I want action." He said schools in the suburbs would be ordered to submit the top 5 percent of their students for admission to the country's best universities.

for link to article click title of this post

photo: http://www.swissinfo.org/xobix_media/images/reuters/2007/reuters_20070827-142010-450x320.jpg

IHT article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/10/europe/france.php

Sarkozy and His Disciplinary Measures

Yes, the NYT says the rage is the same but the tactics are different. Sarkozy should consider changing his tactics also. Authoritarian, arrogant leadership is not what is needed in this situation. If the rage is still there, then the French government still doesn`t understand

A couple of things I want to mention. Although the media said the young people were immigrants, THIS IS INCORRECT. They are French citizens, born in France of people who immigrate from France´s colonies.

The more Sarkozy stamps his foot, the more misunderstood the young people of the banlieue will feel.

November 28, 2007
In French Suburbs, Same Rage, but New Tactics
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, Nov. 27 — Two years after France’s immigrant suburbs exploded in rage, the rituals and acts of resentment have reappeared with an eerie sameness: roving gangs clashing with riot police forces, the government appealing for calm, residents complaining that they are ignored.

And while the scale of the unrest of the past few days does not yet compare with the three-week convulsion in hundreds of suburbs and towns in 2005, a chilling new factor makes it, in some sense, more menacing. The onetime rock throwers and car burners have taken up hunting shotguns and turned them on the police.

More than 100 officers have been wounded, several of them seriously, according to the police. Thirty were hit with buckshot and pellets from shotguns, and one of the wounded was hit with a type of bullet used to kill large game, Patrice Ribeiro, a police spokesman, said in a telephone interview. One of the officers lost an eye; another’s shoulder was shattered by gunfire.

It is legal to own a shotgun in France — as long as the owner has a license — and police circles were swirling with rumors that the bands of youths were procuring more weapons.

“This is a real guerrilla war,” Mr. Ribeiro told RTL radio, warning that the police, who have struggled to avoid excessive force, will not be fired upon indefinitely without responding.

The police have made more than 30 arrests but have been restrained in controlling the violence, using tear gas to disperse the bands of young people and firing paint balls to identify people for possible arrests later.

The prefecture of the police in the Val d’Oise area, where most of the violence has occurred, said Tuesday night that there were no reported injuries among civilians that could be linked to the police.

The events of the past three days, set off by the deaths of two teenagers whose minibike collided with a police vehicle on Sunday, make clear that the underlying causes of frustration and anger — particularly among unemployed, undereducated youths, mostly the offspring of Arab and African immigrants — remain the same.

“We have heard promise after promise, but nothing has been done in the suburbs since the last riots, nothing,” said François Pupponi, the Socialist mayor of Sarcelles, which has been struck by the violence, in an interview. “The suburbs are like tinderboxes. You have people in terrible social circumstances, plus all the rage, plus all the hate, plus all the rumors, and all you need is one spark to set them on fire.”

On Tuesday, there were the first signs of the violence spreading beyond the Paris region when a dozen cars were set afire in the southern city of Toulouse.

In the wake of the unrest in 2005, the government of then-President Jacques Chirac (with Nicolas Sarkozy, now the president, as the tough, law-and-order interior minister) announced measures to improve life in the suburbs, including extra money for housing, schools and neighborhood associations, as well as counseling and job training for unemployed youths. None has gone very far.

At that time, Mr. Sarkozy alienated large numbers of inhabitants in the troubled ethnic pockets of France, but afterward reverted to a low-key approach, which he has maintained ever since. During his presidential campaign, he stayed away from the troubled suburbs, aware that his presence could inflame public opinion against him.

In his six months as president, he has largely focused on injecting new life into France’s flaccid economy through creating jobs and lowering taxes and consumer prices.

His most notable initiative in dealing with youth crime has been punitive: the passage of a law last July that required a minimum sentence for repeat offenders and in many cases allowed minors between 16 and 18 years old to be tried and sentenced as adults.

Since September, Fadela Amara, his outspoken junior minister charged with drawing up a policy for the suburbs, has been holding town hall meetings throughout France in preparation for what is to be a “Marshall Plan” for the suburbs. Her proposals are scheduled to be made public in January.

“We’ve been talking about a Marshall Plan for the suburbs since the early 1990s,” said Adil Jazouli, a sociologist who focuses on the suburbs. “We don’t need poetry. We don’t need reflection. We need money.”

After he returns from China on Wednesday morning, Mr. Sarkozy plans to visit a seriously wounded senior policeman at a hospital near the northern Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel.

It was in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday afternoon that the deaths of two teenagers identified as Moushin, 15, and Larimi, 16, occurred, the event that set off the latest unrest. The teenagers were riding without helmets on a minibike that collided with a police car; rumors that the police had caused the accident elicited calls for revenge.

The crash was reminiscent of the electrocution deaths in another Paris suburb in October 2005 of two teenagers, who, according to some accounts, were running away from police. That event set off the worst civil unrest in France in four decades, plunging the country into what Mr. Chirac called “a profound malaise.”

But Mr. Sarkozy, still reeling from huge transit strikes and student protests throughout France this month, is unlikely to use the current unrest as a vehicle to turn introspective or vent his rage too loudly at those he once called “scum.”

In 2005, he vowed to clean out young troublemakers from one Paris suburb with a Kärcher, the brand name of a high-powered hose used to wash off graffiti; when he pledged in another suburb that year to rid poor suburban neighborhoods of their “scum,” he was pelted with bottles and rocks.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister François Fillon told Parliament that the clashes were “unacceptable, intolerable, incomprehensible,” and he pledged punishment for the offenders in the affected suburbs.

“Those who shoot at policemen, those who beat a police officer almost to death, are criminals and must be treated as such,” he said, adding, “We will do everything so that tonight there is a maximum security presence.”

Under heavy security on Tuesday night, Mr. Fillon visited Villiers-le-Bel, where the two youths had died, in what he called a show of support for the police and firefighters. About 1,000 police officers were deployed there.

Critics of the Sarkozy government complain that many areas in the suburbs are without a police presence, and that the only time there is a show of security is after violence erupts.

“Sarkozy promised to send more police to the suburbs, but in so many places there are fewer police than there were two years ago,” said Mohamed Hamidi, the French founder of Bondy Blog, a popular political blog created in the Paris suburb of Bondy
after the outbreak of violence in 2005. “He didn’t keep his word. Who suffers from all the violence and the burning cars? The people who live in these neighborhoods.”

In Villiers-le-Bel on Tuesday night, the atmosphere was tense, with white police trucks and antiriot police officers on the streets. Earlier in the day, about 300 people, including children, marched silently in memory of the two dead teenagers.

At a bakery on a small plaza in town, Habib Friaa, the baker, mourned their deaths, especially that of Larimi, who had started an apprenticeship with him two months ago.

“Baking was his passion,” Mr. Friaa said. “He was a courageous young man, someone who had hope.”

Ariane Bernard contributed reporting from Paris, and Basil Katz from Villiers-le-Bel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/world/europe/28france.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

France Part Two: It's not our mission to be police auxiliaries

France Races to Oust Illegal Immigrants
con't


In the Netherlands, the first act of the new parliament elected in November 2006 was to halt deportations set in motion by the previous government.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's new government declared an amnesty for up to 30,000 people. New asylum seekers and illegal immigrants still face a tough regime, kept in camps while their cases are handled. Even legal immigrants must pass language tests before coming and take citizenship classes in order to remain.

Meanwhile, resistance to France's crackdown has built among human rights groups, politicians of the opposition left, and even police. Injuries of foreigners during the past two months have also mobilized critics.

The 12-year-old Russian boy, who was fleeing with his illegal alien father in the northern town of Amiens, has been hospitalized with serious head injuries since early August. The North African man in the southern town of Roussillon suffered double fractures to his leg. The Chinese woman fell from an apartment in Paris on Thursday when police investigating a theft complaint turned up to carry out a check.

"Neighborhood groups are forming," said Pierre Willem of the UNSA police union. "Reactions are becoming more and more violent."

Some police officers worry they will get caught in the numbers hunt _ accused of racism for making arrests on the basis of skin color or other illegal criteria.

Even unions representing Air France employees are protesting, saying the flagship carrier's image is suffering because the government uses it to return illegal aliens, sometimes bound hand and foot, on flights occasionally marked by violent incidents.

"It's not our mission to be police auxiliaries," said Leon Cremieux, a national secretary of Sud Aerien, a small union representing employees of the aviation industry. Conditions during some expulsions are "contrary to human rights."

Socialist lawmaker Michele Delaunay, of Bordeaux, recently became a symbolic sponsor of a Kurd of Turkish nationality who had been ordered to leave France, stalling the expulsion process.

"It's a way to show the public that these problems of expulsion are, above all, human problems and not numbers," Delaunay said, adding that the young man speaks French, worked and paid taxes, making his case "particularly legitimate."

She nevertheless received an official warning that citizens who help illegal aliens stay in France risk a five-year prison term.

France Part One: I Want Numbers Says Sarkozy

Terror in France

France Races to Oust Illegal Immigrants
By ELAINE GANLEY
The Associated Press
Washington Post
Saturday, September 22, 2007; 7:11 AM


PARIS -- A Russian boy suffers head injuries after falling from a window while trying to elude police. A North African man slips from a window ledge and fractures his leg while fleeing officers. A Chinese woman lies in a coma after plunging from a window during a police check.

As France races to deport 25,000 illegal immigrants by the end of the year _ a quota set by President Nicolas Sarkozy _ tensions are mounting and the crackdown is taking a toll.

Critics say the hunt threatens values in a nation that prides itself on being a cradle of human rights and a land of asylum. Protesters have gathered by the dozens in Paris to protect illegal aliens as police move in.

But with three months left in the year, police have caught at least 11,800 immigrants, less than half the target, so Sarkozy has ordered officials to pick up the pace.

"I want numbers," Sarkozy reportedly told Brice Hortefeux, head of the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development, which Sarkozy set up after taking office in May. "This is a campaign commitment. The French expect (action) on this."

There are no solid estimates of the number of illegal aliens in France. The Immigration Ministry puts it at 200,000 to 400,000, many from former colonies in Africa. France has a population of some 63 million.

The president, who cultivated a tough-on-crime image while serving as Interior Minister, says France needs a new kind of immigrant _ one who is "selected, not endured."

His government is fast-tracking tighter immigration legislation. Parliament's lower house on Thursday approved a bill that would allow consular officers to request DNA samples from immigrants trying to join relatives in France. Even some Cabinet ministers dislike the measure, which critics say betrays France's humanitarian values.

The DNA tests would be voluntary and proponents say such testing, which would get a trial run until 2010, would speed visa processing and give immigrants a way to bolster their applications.

Immigration legislation under consideration also aims to ensure that immigrants joining family members here speak French and grasp French values _ to be proven with tests.

In a nationally televized interview Thursday, Sarkozy went further, saying he wants France to adopt immigration quotas by regions of the world and by occupation.

"I want us to be able to establish each year, after a debate in parliament, a quota with a ceiling for the number of foreigners we accept on our territory," he said.

European countries to the south, like Italy or Spain, face a greater challenge from illegal immigration than France _ but neither has set themselves targets for throwing aliens out...

Sarkozy: France to Expel 25,000 Immigrants before 2008

Maybe Sarkozy went too far. Lets hope so. The U.S. Congress would learn plenty by watching France. The idea of DNA testing reminds me of putting micro chips in immigrants.


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DNA TESTS AND DEPORTATION TARGETS
French Left Resists Sarkozy's Immigration Crackdown
Spiegal On-Line International
September 14, 2007

The immigration debate is hotting up in France, as left-wing politicians and human rights groups face off against the government's plans for tougher immigration laws, including DNA tests. Now eight Paris mayors say they won't cooperate with implementing Sarkozy's deportation targets.

The French goverment is toughening up its immigration policies, with plans to introduce DNA tests for prospective immigrants and demands that local officals meet their deportation targets. But the left is hitting back, with eight Paris mayors saying they won't cooperate and human rights groups accusing the government of treating immigrants as "disposable objects" instead of human beings.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy campaigned on a law and order platform, which included a pledge to crack down on illegal immigration and make it harder for foreigners to make France their home. His government is now considering introducing DNA tests for prospective immigrants, while his Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux (more...) has told local prefects they are not doing enough to hit the president's deportation targets.

Sarkozy had promised to expel 25,000 illegal immigrants from France by the end of 2007. But Hortefeux, who is head of the newly created Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, is struggling to meet the target, with only 11,000 having been shown the door in the first seven months of the year. "I want numbers!" Sarkozy told the minister in a meeting last month, according to Le Point magazine. "It's a campaign commitment. The French are expecting this from me," he was reported as saying...

For complete article: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,505733,00.html

article posted previously on the Huffington Post

cartoon: http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/gri/lowres/grin738l.jpg