First, as French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin stated, a quota will be introduced on the number of new migrants. That is, only a strictly defined number of foreigners will be able to settle in the country during the year. The prime minister did not disclose the size of the quotas. However, he clarified that they will not be distributed by nationality. The decisive factor will be the professional qualities of the applicants (the same system has been in effect in Great Britain for a year now). As de Villepin stated, the country will admit those visitors "whose knowledge and skills the French economy needs." These are mainly doctors, programmers and engineers, as, incidentally, in most major European countries. The professional suitability of a migrant will be determined by a special commission based on the number of points awarded for language proficiency (in this case French) and the "usefulness" of the profession. For those who fail the test, the country will most likely be closed.
At the same time, as de Villepin said, measures will be expanded for the forced expulsion of those who are in France illegally. There are currently no fewer than 400,000 of them. A specially created migration committee will deal with them, within which a migration police will operate. Its task is to catch illegal immigrants and send them back to their homeland. The French authorities intend to expel about 20,000 uninvited guests from the country this year alone.
In addition, the French government intends to take a number of other measures. For example, to cancel the automatic acquisition of French citizenship upon marriage to a French person. Or, say, to create a list of "safe countries" whose citizens will be allowed to be granted political asylum or refugee status.
"All these measures will benefit our economy. The pressure on the labor market will ease, unemployment, which currently stands at 10.2%, will decrease," the French prime minister stated. However, there is also a purely political subtext here. France's share of foreigners is not the highest compared to other European giants - about 6% (in Germany, as much as 10%). But it is the French who are especially sensitive to the issue of migration. Migrants are one of the main reasons why the single European constitution was rejected here, because it was supposed to equalize the rights of EU "old-timers" and newly acceded members. Now that the migration issue has been practically resolved, the authorities hope that the French will look at the main body of European Union law differently.