Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

A government assault on illegal immigrant children yields a new French Revolution.

By Daniel Nichanian, Yale University

“Vous aussi, parrainez un enfant sans papier” (you too, sponsor an illegal immigrant child) declared left-leaning French daily Libération in stunning call for civil disobedience earlier this summer, as it pleaded with its readers to protect the children of illegal immigrants (including those born in France) from deportation. To lead the way, the paper announced it would sponsor a child every day of that week: “Libération, godfather of Melanie Ortiz, 4-years old” was a headline on June 26. Matsak and Lilit, 11 and 12-years old, were chosen on June 27, and Madalena, Backys and Glory, aged 9, 5, and 3, on June 28.

Libération’s call to action was the climax of 10 months of mobilization in support of the children of immigrants threatened with expulsion by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Having renewed his commitment to combating illegal immigration in the fall of 2005, Sarkozy—a presidential aspirant who is himself the son of a Hungarian immigrant—had to figure out how to deal with the thousands of families whose children go to French schools, just as the children of any other resident of France. He chose to avoid a confrontation in the middle of the year and announced that no expulsions would take place before the end of the school year, on June 30, 2006. This delay, soon known as the “Sarkozy truce,” allowed enough time for a resistance movement to organize itself against the decrees of the Interior Ministry.

Bernard Jomier, a Green party member of the Paris City Council said to Libération in opposition to the decree, “Few things mobilize public opinion to such an extent. A bachelor threatened with expulsion will get no one emotional. But as soon as children find themselves in the crosshairs, people revolt.” How that could have escaped Sarkozy remains a mystery. It did not escape, however, the Network for Education without Frontiers (RESF), an organization created in 2004 with the explicit purpose of supporting immigrant children. Understanding the benefits of framing the expulsion campaign as a “child hunt,” RESF immediately went into action, launching petitions and calling on ordinary citizens to join the fight to protect the threatened children.

The matter was not presented as a traditional immigrant rights issue, but as an attack on communities. In other words, it is not just the lives of the deported children that would be affected, but those of every single person in their neighborhoods, schools, and houses of worship. Reports in prominent newspapers such as Le Monde and Libération soon testified to the success of RESF’s campaign in mobilizing far beyond the usual leftist activists. Libération reported in its May 19 issue that many parents involved in the resistance network explained that they did not feel concerned until their own children started worrying about the fate of some of their friends.

Helped by celebrities (soccer player Lilian Thuram has been particularly outspoken on the issue, denouncing the “Sarkozyization of minds” on July 18) and left-leaning political parties, the RESF got thousands of people to agree to hide children and otherwise resist expulsions after the deadline of June 30. Such actions are clearly illegal, but many ordinary citizens publicly declared themselves ready to face the risks to assist people they have known for years. The petition, already signed by around 120,000 people, is a full-throated pledge of support: “ We will not allow these infamies to be done in our name. Every one of us is ready to help, guide and protect in whatever way is possible. When they seek refuge, we will not close our doors but will give shelter and food; we will not denounce them to the police.” To strengthen the commitment of its supporters, RESF asked them to sponsor individual children and look after their well-being. Municipalities all around the country, usually headed by left-wing mayors, organized sponsorship ceremonies in city halls throughout the spring.

While it is doubtful that RESF’s civil disobedience network can resist the police if Sarkozy is determined to carry out the expulsions, this protest has already demonstrated its effectiveness as a public relations stunt. In a highly reported case in April, two young siblings facing deportation were kept hidden by different families in Lyon. Indeed, according to French law, hiding children is enough to protect a family: the police are not allowed to deport a mother without her children. A few other examples of hidden children have been enough to demonstrate RESF’s strength and their ability to generate favorable media coverage.

Sarkozy has had to react carefully to this campaign. He knew he could not prevail without appearing conciliatory. But he also realized that he could not give in to the demands of RESF without alienating his electoral base and attracting the wrath of the far-right. The last two months revealed how shrewd a politician Sarkozy is.

On June 13, Sarkozy announced that, under three strict conditions, some families could be regularized: Their children must have been born in France, gone to school only in France, and must not know the language of his family’s country of origin. Most media outlets, such as televised news, reported this as an act of clemency, while immigrant organizations soon protested, arguing that only 2 to 5 percent of the threatened families meet the criteria. But Sarkozy’s announcement had another crucial consequence: it postponed the day of the start of expulsions. Indeed, thousands of families in precarious positions rushed to the nearest government office and submitted demands to be regularized. Sarkozy announced that no expulsions would take place before all of the demands were assessed, sometime in the month of August. When June 30 came around, RESF did warn “the children hunt” would now start, but the sense of urgency had stalled.

Throughout the month of July, French administration officials slowly but significantly changed their tune. Sarkozy, who pledged there would be no regularizations earlier in the year, soon declared that about a thousand families met the criteria. When a prefect estimated that “a couple of thousand” families would be affected, Sarkozy replied, “Those who know nothing of the situation should abstain from intervening.” But the three restrictive conditions under which an illegal immigrant could be regularized, outlined by Sarkozy on June 13, had discreetly been modified into slightly less restrictive conditions, that more families would presumably be able to meet. On July 24, Sarkozy announced that 7,000 people, 30 percent of those who had submitted applications at their prefecture, would be regularized. In response the far right demanded that all illegal immigrants be immediately deported. The left was similarly enraged (in their opinion the number was too low), and Socialist politician Jack Lang declared that there are at least 20,000 students who deserve to be regularized. In other words, Sarkozy, by courting opposition on both sides, seems to be on his way to portraying his solution as the centrist path between two extremes, thus reducing the public outrage that fed the RESF movement.

The way different newspapers reacted to Sarkozy’s most recent declaration speaks to the changing tone of the immigration dialogue in the past few weeks. Libération was characteristically harsh, emphasizing the number of children Sarkozy still plans to deport. “Sarkozy rejects two of every three children,” was its headline of July 25, with Sarkozy being criticized for cultivating an “image of severity instead of real humanity.” The same day, Le Figaro, the leading right-leaning daily, chose to profile “Marisa and Rafael,” a couple with two children that chose to accept the 11,000 euros the French government offered to pay if they did not ask to be regularized and left France voluntarily (only five families in all of France had taken advantage of this offer at the time the article appeared).

The police have already started organizing some expulsions, and the deadline for the thousands of remaining families is fast approaching. The situation is even more puzzling when one considers how isolated France appears on the immigration issue among its European neighbors. Spain announced a massive number of regularizations last year, and the newly elected center-left Italian Premier Romano Prodi is planning to legalize 500,000 illegal immigrants. Even the conservative German government of Angela Merkel is taking the same path for more than a 100,000 immigrants. So why is Sarkozy so dead set against a real act of clemency? Could it have something to do with the fact that presidential elections are less than a year away?

Over the past five years, Sarkozy has prepared himself to be the next French president. The presidential campaign of 2002 focused mainly on issues of public safety and social order, which led to the stunning scenario in which Socialist Lionel Jospin received fewer votes in the first round than far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. As Minister of the Interior for three of the past five years under President Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy depicted himself as the “first cop of France,” and has become the candidate of public order. Immigration is an obvious component of Sarkozy’s strategy. With many already reproaching him for openly flirting with the nationalist electorate of the far-right National Front party, Sarkozy recently borrowed some of National Front leader Le Pen’s old slogans—“La France, tu l’aimes ou tu la quittes” (France, you love it or you leave it)—and drafted a controversial immigration plan, strongly condemned in African countries, especially by President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal who accused France of trying to steal away the elites of developing countries while making it drastically more difficult for less educated immigrants to receive immigration documents.

Appearing too strict and embarking in a stubborn battle against the RESF would cast Sarkozy in the role of an inhumane “child hunter.” But Sarzkozy cannot follow Germany, Italy and Spain’s lead on clemency without alienating his own base and becoming the whipping boy of the far-right, whose voters support is essential to his electoral strategy. The danger for Sarkozy, of course, is that his precarious position becomes too obvious. In addition to Libération’s predictable criticism that Sarkozy is sacrificing immigrant children to electoral concerns, many regional newspapers are sounding the same theme.

Sarkozy has wavered plenty over the past two months; whether it will be enough to deflect public outrage still remains to be seen. Ultimately, the fate of thousands of immigrants is at stake and many will soon be deported. But if RESF still has the force to mount an active resistance movement, it could leave the French political scene in chaos a year before the presidential election, and rewrite the way grassroots issue campaigns are conducted in France—and perhaps elsewhere too.

Illustration: Matt Bors

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