The Court of Auditors called for simplifying France's overly complex immigration legislation
As reported by RFI, according to representatives of the Court of Auditors, France is one of the countries with the strictest immigration legislation. According to experts, relative to its population, its authorities issue almost three times fewer residence permits to foreigners than Germany, and almost twice as few as Spain.
According to the highest financial control body, the procedures that foreigners have to go through in France are often "excessively long and complex," and this affects not only residence permit applicants but also administrative and prefecture staff.
As stated in the report, in 2016 France issued more than 240,000 first-time residence permits to foreigners arriving in the country. This amounted to 3.72 documents per thousand inhabitants. "Only the United States is stricter, with 3.67 permits per thousand people," the Court of Auditors believes.
However, experts criticized the procedure for issuing permits the most. "In the prefectures, large queues form in the mornings even before opening. In some of them, applications are accepted only half a working day per week. Applicants have to come without knowing whether their documents will be taken. In the most overloaded prefectures, acceptance of applications may be closed for days and months to process already received files," experts claim.
As migrants who had to apply at the Paris police prefecture told RFI, this is indeed the case: appointments have to be booked several months in advance, and one must queue at least an hour before opening. In some cases, applicants have to come 3-5 times to submit their files, and migrants spend up to six hours in queues.
In 2017, the newspaper La Libération published a report from the queue at the prefecture of the Paris suburb of Nanterre. There, places in the queue were taken at four in the morning. According to journalists, a place in the queue can be bought for 150-300 euros.
According to the Court of Auditors, France's policy on labor migration is far from the real needs of the labor market. To obtain a work permit for a foreigner, one must go through a complex procedure that is supposed to "weed out" workers without French citizenship in professions with high unemployment. However, in reality, this does not happen.
An exception to the general rule is made only for "in-demand" sectors. Foreigners can get jobs in these positions under a simplified scheme. However, the document listing 30 professions needed in France was approved in 2008 and has not been updated since. This list includes, among others, surveyor, glass cutter, merchandiser, and remote sales operator.
"The attempt to attract 'talent' from abroad has never been properly undertaken. Labor migration remains at a low level. Meanwhile, unemployment in France is high mainly in low-skilled professions. This area is already almost completely closed to migrants," the Court of Auditors' report says.
Auditors consider legislative policy to be one of the reasons for this situation. Over the past 15 years, the National Assembly has adopted about ten documents regulating migration and transferred almost all its aspects to the control of the Interior Ministry. The economic component was hardly taken into account.