FRANCE: France will grant residency permits to roughly 6,000 illegal immigrants, but expel more than twice as many under controversial new immigration rules.
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy made the announcement yesterday just days after Italy said it might legalise hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and Germany said it was considering a regularisation plan.
Mr Sarkozy, who is a leading conservative candidate for the presidency next year, said the Government had decided to use children registered at French schools as a way of tracking down families without residency papers.
He previously vowed to expel illegal immigrants and tighten residency rules after poor suburbs across France, many of them home to descendants of immigrants, erupted last year in a wave of rioting.
About 20,000 applications for papers are expected to be filed by illegal immigrants this summer, and roughly 6,000 residency permits would be granted, said Mr Sarkozy.
"People who are not given residency papers . . . must leave the country," Mr Sarkozy said.
Some 4.5 million immigrants live in France, official data shows, and the interior ministry estimates there are between 200,000 and 400,000 illegal foreigners in the country.
In an effort to take the sting out of growing protests, he announced last month that some illegal immigrants would be granted residency if their children show they have strong links to France and meet integration criteria such as speaking French.
Meanwhile, Italy said at the weekend it was considering legalising more than 500,000 migrants that work illegally in Italy.
In 2004, Spain approved new guidelines that included a partial amnesty aimed at giving papers to some of the 800,000 illegal immigrants estimated to be living within its borders.
"There will be no blanket granting of residency papers in France," Mr Sarkozy said.