The French National Assembly has passed a new racist bill that will require immigrants seeking to join their families already living in France to pass a series of tests. These include tests on the French language and French “values,” as well as a “voluntary” DNA test, among others.
This bill, which will be debated in the senate next month, passed during the height of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s vicious campaign to deport 25,000 immigrants by the end of the year. With three months left in 2007, police have arrested 11,800 people—less then half of the quota. Unimpressed, Sarkozy ordered the police to increase repression in immigrant communities, saying, “I want numbers.”
The attack on immigrants, many of whom are from former French colonies in North Africa, is an attempt to instill fear in and control over the segment of the working class that is the most oppressed, the most radical and the most opposed to French imperialism.
