French Consider Tightening Immigration After Riots

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced plans on Tuesday to tighten immigration controls in response to France's worst urban rioting in almost 40 years.

He proposed a longer wait for citizenship for foreigners who marry French people, a tougher selection process for students visiting France and close checks on immigration by families joining a foreign worker already living in the country.

"The government will act firmly and with a sense of responsibility," Villepin told reporters after a ministerial meeting on immigration control.

He also called for tight policing of polygamy, which is illegal in France but some center-right politicians say was one of the causes of the unrest because children from large polygamous families have problems integrating into society.

I'd say that folks who have problems integrating into society may not want to integrate into the society or that the society doesn't want them there in the first place. In Frace, you get both ends of the deal. Recent immigrants are not welcomed as citizens and many of the recent immigrants want to maintain their separate national/religious identities. No amount of legalisms will change that.

How does a longer wait to immigrate to France change the existing dynamic? Fewer people coming into France will solve matters? I don't think so. Such simplistic thinking would result in castigation by the media elites had it been suggested by some US politicians, but it gets a pass since it's the French proposing these measures.

Under Villepin's plans, a foreigner who marries a French person will obtain French nationality after 4 years if the couple lives in France -- 2 more than now. The wait will increase from 3 to 5 years for couples living abroad.

Foreign students wishing to follow courses in France will be subject to a tougher selection process.

Because the 35,000 people who are affected by the proposed marriage requirements are really going to stop the problems with the French society in general.

What the French don't quite understand is that people want a stake in society. If they're not stakeholders, they're not going to care about what happens to their country, their villages, or their communities. Making these people go through even more hoops may only result in further alienation among those who choose to come to France legally.

No Pasaran notes that the French briefly considered using the Lebanese model for social reform:

France now finds itself toying with similar things, and at a similar level to a nation that had to reconstruct itself after it went through a 16 year long civil war.

France 2 reports that the Prime Minister rejected the notion of introducing a kind of compulsory civilian service similar to a military draft, but had at least weasely, guarded proponency to at least removing another barrier, albeit lat[e] in the game: the photo required with a CV.