© Provided by Yabiladi
The discontent against the French government’s visa restriction policy targeting three Maghreb countries has gone crescendo with the summer season. The blackmail readmission of migrants in an irregular situation VS visa, is perceived as a humiliation by many Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians wishing to visit their family in France. Some French deputies have taken a public stand for a fairer visa policy, in particular Karim Ben Cheikh, NUPES deputy for the 9th constituency of French nationals living abroad. INTERVIEW.
More and more people in Morocco, but also in Algeria and Tunisia, are complaining about the refusal to issue visas by French consulates when the files are complete. How do you assess the situation?
The visa situation in the three Maghreb countries is worrying and requires urgent intervention by the French government to change policy.
Since last September, the government has decided to drastically reduce the visas granted to nationals of the three Maghreb countries: Morocco (50%), Algeria (50%), Tunisia (30%). This policy was presented, from the outset, as a retaliatory measure against the three countries, on the grounds that the latter would refuse to issue consular laissez-passer for their nationals subject to obligations to leave French territory (OQTF ). Many nationals of the three countries, including many families of French nationals, complain of refusal of visas which they consider unjustified.
It is obvious that the assigned objectives of refusing visas in such proportions prevent the consular services from doing their job under good conditions. It is these services which are today in the front line and it is they which are obliged to refuse visas which they used to accept in full compliance with the Schengen regulations. It is just as obvious that these objectives, in terms of refusal, also have the consequence of excessively preventing people’s mobility. It is natural that all this maintains a growing feeling of injustice and humiliation. It is also my role to ring the alarm bell because I am concerned about the future of relations between France and the populations of the three countries.
You have placed the issue of visas among the important points of your campaign program for the legislative elections. What actions have been taken to bring the voice of North African families deprived of travel to their relatives in France?
As a deputy, I officially challenged the government, via a written question addressed ten days ago to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, in order to request the lifting of drastic visa reductions. I explain that Moroccan, Algerian or Tunisian citizens do not have to suffer the consequences of a policy of arm-wrestling with dubious effectiveness. We await the government’s response.
During my campaign for the legislative elections, I was very often questioned on this subject and I have regularly received, since my election on June 19, requests from compatriots on the subject of visas. Contrary to what some try to insinuate, visa policy is not irrelevant for a French MP, firstly because many compatriots have foreign relatives who must apply for visas to exercise their right to movement for family life. Then, one of the consequences of the current blockage and which I am concerned about, is also the questioning, both in the media and on social networks, of French institutional actors, or even simply of compatriots, who are arrested, sometimes vehemently about the consequences of a policy they have not decided on. In the end, and on a daily basis, I see on the ground that this policy is damaging our bilateral relations with close countries, with close populations. So I can’t just relay individual situations. My work is of course also political. This is why I call on the government.
What is the leeway of your parliamentary group on this decision taken by the executive?
I sit in the ecologist group, which belongs to the intergroup of the New Popular Ecologist and Social Union (NUPES). We are in the parliamentary opposition and we will not hesitate to challenge the government on the disastrous consequences of its policies. Rather than leeway vis-à-vis the government, I will talk about the freedom of tone and the demands that a deputy must make vis-à-vis this same government. Our compatriots of the 9th do not need a godillot deputy, who would put forward his complacency with regard to the majority as a pledge of influence. I will not change my mind on visas, and I maintain that it is up to the executive to revise its copy.
There is no reaction from the officials of the three Maghreb countries, even though business executives and the families of senior officials are concerned by the drastic reduction in the visas granted. In your opinion, is the solution Franco-French or a reaction from the Maghreb countries could resolve the situation?
It is not for me to comment on the reactions of officials from the three Maghreb countries, what I would like is for France to revise its current policy and measure the consequences. Once again, the policy of the current government is having very concrete effects on people with varied profiles, who do not understand the visa refusals and delays they are experiencing. The media, including yours, social networks regularly echo it. And it’s legit. The current policy generates incomprehension, and even a certain annoyance. Some reactions may seem excessive, but you have to hear the rising anger and provide the right answers.
Isn’t France scoring against its side by sanctioning the citizens of the 3 Maghreb countries? Wasn’t there another way to handle the issue of readmissions of irregular migrants via Rabat, Algiers or Tunis?
You are right to point out that it is the lives of foreign citizens that are impacted. I am not one of those who think that the question of irregular immigration can be solved by confusing it with the question of mobility.
I doubt, moreover, that the “results” that Mr. Darmanin boasts of justify such a break in our bilateral relations with Rabat, Algiers and Tunis. For forty years, the French right has not ceased to stage its firmness on immigration with no other result than to raise the extreme right, election after election. It is time to make the current government face up to its responsibilities.
People who present all the guarantees for a Schengen visa must obtain it, it is a matter of justice. How to explain that a visa is refused to a parent of French children, believing that this will not have consequences on our bilateral relations? Why want to double the number of pupils in French schools in the name of France’s influence and not guarantee these pupils the possibility of continuing their studies in France? How to carry out a real economic diplomacy by “sanctioning”, as the government asserts, “the elites”? The current policy is a dead end. Day after day, it leads to a breach of trust with the populations of the three countries.