“France is a fine thing, a great thing, a generous thing.”
— Charles de Gaulle, 1958
The Pasqua laws form a whole. Whether it is a matter of making accession to French nationality more difficult, of carrying out systematic identity checks on all persons having the appearance of a foreigner, or finally of preventing the residence in France of individuals in an irregular situation, this legislative train obeys a quite precise political will: to “master” (to borrow the wording of the legal text) the phenomenon of immigration.
The collectivity of French Jews, with its own philosophy and its particular history, is morally concerned by this legislative bulimia of the government appointed last March. Many Jews who are French today lived through this condition of the foreigner in France. Many of them were very glad to be able to say to themselves “Happy as G-d in France,” and they hardly balked at undertaking the sometimes difficult formalities that allowed them to acquire French nationality.
The new law provides that young people born in France of foreign parents must perform a positive act and therefore apply for nationality. At first glance there is nothing shocking in this requirement. And yet this new measure casts upon young people born on French soil, acculturated to France, a systematic and paradoxical suspicion. Until now, those concerned had to apply, on reaching their majority, for a national identity card. This step was more than a formality. It revealed precisely a will to become French. Why add a new requirement?
The identity checks intended to flush out the foreigner in an irregular situation recall many things to the oldest among the Jews of France (“Papers,” “Papiren”). In 1993, it will be enough to have, in Paris, a Yiddish accent, for example, for an administrative police officer (that is, one acting outside any judicial investigation) to know, in many cases (if one is named Cohen, Lévy, Israël, Abramovitch, or Bensaïd), that one is Jewish — which, obviously, is in no way shameful for the person checked, but may be significant for the one doing the checking.
A fundamental right: that of fleeing persecution
The new situation is perhaps aggravated by the fact that it casts a detestable light on the condition of the immigrant in France. What is an immigrant? He is first of all, in general, an allogene; next a métèque (a non-pejorative word meaning a foreigner settled in the country); he is finally a normal economic actor, generally without great means. Faced with the impossibility (for which it is responsible) of controlling entry at the borders, the government decrees that immigrants present on the territory of the Republic must undergo special treatment, even when no law is broken and no disturbance brought to public order. Moreover, the Minister of the Interior is credited with the intention of creating a veritable immigration police. Why not a Commissariat-General for … immigrant questions? That too recalls something to the Jews.
Finally, what is most unbearable in these new provisions, voted by Parliament and apparently supported by a majority, is that they take no account of France’s situation in the world. The right of asylum, recognized by the French Constitution, is artificially attached to an immigration policy, on the pretext that there are false asylum seekers. Yet this same right is inherent in the history of the Jewish communities of Europe; it is bound to a fundamental right, that of fleeing persecution. By leaving the exercise of this right to the discretion of the administrative authority, the new law morally infringes upon it.
Everyone today must understand that it is absolutely necessary to establish bridges of solidarity between the world of hunger and that of the well-provided. What tragedy is there in an irregular immigrant in France “profiting” from our social protection, or making up — even if he has no right to it — for his destitution with the crumbs of our feasts?
Actualité Juive, 8 July 1993