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Sarkozy is accused of wooing right voters with his tough immigration bill. (Reuters)
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By
Hadi Yahmid, IOL correspondent
PARIS,
April 27 (IslamOnline.net) – Charging batteries for next year's
race, many French presidential hopefuls are increasingly playing the
immigration cards to lure far-right votes.
Interior
Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is facing charges of pandering to the extreme
right with his new immigration bill.
The
bill would make it tougher for immigrants to bring relatives to
France, force newcomers to take French and civics lessons and end
their automatic right to a long-term residence permit after 10 years
in France.
Opponents
say the xenophobic bill will stigmatize foreigners, discriminate
against the poor and undermine France's traditional role as a haven
for the persecuted.
Sarkozy's
own immigrant father might have failed to qualify for French
nationality had his son's rules applied when he fled
Communist-controlled Hungary in the late 1940s, they maintain.
In
October last year, thousands of youths of immigrant origin protested
violently at discrimination at workplace and educational institutions
as many feel trapped in the drab suburbs, built in the 1960s and 1970s
to house waves of immigrant workers.
Competing
Sarkozy
triggered a controversy recently saying people who do not like France
should leave.
"If
people don't like being in France they only have to leave," he
told 2,500 members of his ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP)
party.
"We
cannot change our laws our habits or our customs because they don't
please a tiny minority."
This
prompted charges that Sarkozy is competing with known anti-immigrants
politicians like far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and
Philippe de Villiers, head of the anti-immigrant Movement for France (MPF)
party.
Villiers
himself accused Sarkozy of copying his slogan, France, you like it or
leave it.
"Since
he's been in power what has he been waiting for to stop immigration,
to expel Islamic extremists, to ban their activities linked to
terrorism, to impose a republican charter for the building of mosques?
he told Le Journal du Dimanche.
Kicking
off his presidential campaign last week, the nationalist politician
denounced what he called the "Islamization" of the country.
A
recent poll showed 34 percent of French people think far-right
politicians dealt with issues they worried about.
Sixty-seven
percent cited immigration and 63 percent mentioned security.
Opponents
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Fabius favors the Italian and Spanish examples in settling the conditions of illegal immigrants.
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This
competition on the right wing drew criticism from opposition Socialist
leader Francois Hollande.
He
complained that Villiers was echoing Le Pen and Sarkozy was talking
like Villiers.
Former
premier Laurent Fabius accused the right wing of using the immigration
issue to get closer to the far right and defeat the left.
He
said Sarkozy was "waging a deplorable operation of
deviation" on immigration issue.
"We
have one year before the presidential elections. The right wing and
Sarkozy face difficulties as far as the social and economic fields are
concerned. So he chose immigration, immigration, immigration."
Fabius,
a possible presidential contender, favors the regularization of
illegal migrants' situations, citing similar drives in Spain and
Italy.
Leftist
governments have dealt positively with the issue of illegal
immigrants.
In
1981, late President Francois Mitterrand settled the conditions of
some 130,000 illegals.
Successive
leftist governments had followed the same path settling the cases of
some 100,000 illegal immigrants in the 1990s.
