Just as President Macron wished, the debate on immigration opened in the National Assembly on Monday, followed by the Senate on Wednesday. Most of all, what Macron wishes that this debate is talked about everywhere. Despised, Macron has decided to take a page out of the playbook of Marine Le Pen (leader of the far-right nationalist party), hoping that he will regain some credibility among “the lower classes”, as he said. That is, before he attacks the same lower classes again. He is under the false impression that we have not realised that he is blind and deaf when it comes to our wages, pensions or public services!
Fact checking: “Is France the number one European country preferred by asylum seekers?”
Macron and those who write for him claim that France is on the verge of becoming the preferred destination in Europe for asylum seekers. This is a shameful lie. France is in the 11th place in Europe when it comes to applications for asylum per capita, and in the 15th place when it comes to the economic productivity (GDP). Out of 28 countries! Nothing to brag about!
Macron wants to restrict healthcare for illegal immigrants – the AME (State Medical Aid)
Macron is pointing the finger at the AME (State Medical Aid), insisting that it’s costing the taxpayer a billion Euros a year and that France is the only country providing a health system that is “too attractive” for migrants. Lies again! France is the only country that dared to create a separate medical aid budget for migrants, almost as if the government wanted to make it easier to point the finger at migrants!
Migrants are also given medical attention elsewhere, but those costs are integrated in the common budget, without creating a parallel system.
Offering healthcare services is not only a minimal proof of human solidarity, but it’s also indispensable. Reducing the AME would mean that ill migrants would go to the emergency room instead, which would eventually cost 50% more to the health system. Not offering healthcare would simply amount to increasing a sanitary risk for everyone: the main issues that cause migrants to need hospital admissions Tuberculosis, AIDS and caesarean births.
What should be done? Let the person with TB die, or the ones carrying HIV, or the mothers whose labour is life-threatening, just because they are undocumented?
Macron says he wants to act “firmly and with humanity”! We know all about his firmness, “ça crève les yeux” as the Yellow Vests chanted (meaning at the same time “it’s so obvious” and “it puts eyes out”, referring to police brutality with rubber bullets shotguns). As for his humanity, does it lie in allowing migrant camps on the Parisian highway ramps, be it raining or snowing, entire families living in shameful inhumane conditions with no options for relocation?
Daring to use words like humanism or humanity should burn in the mouths of Macron and his followers!
Villainous calculations
But Macron is not only looking to increase his popularity for the sake of small electoral victories. What he wants is to have the freedom to go after all the working class, with the reforms that he has in mind, and the pension reform is the first step in this process.
Hardening immigration conditions is also a step, as he knows perfectly well that the policies led by the great powers such as France, can only lead to larger numbers of immigrants wanting to leave The wars aimed at dominating raw materials (such as the rare ingredients found in smartphones and the “green” car batteries, sourced in the Congo), and climate change provoked by their polluting industrial complexes, can only increase displacements of populations trying to escape regions that have become unlivable. World leaders like Macron, want for business owners to choose their migrants while the rest are kept contained far away from Europe. In fact the main countries receiving migrants are not in Europe, but in Africa. And when they happen to be parked near Europe, they are to be found in Turkey, Greece, Malta, or Cyprus, where they are stuck due to the so-called “Dublin Procedure”.
If we didn’t know it already, we have the confirmation now. There are no huge differences between Macron and Le Pen, who are both ready sink to the low levels of anti-immigrant demagoguery.
