In a television interview on Thursday evening, Socialist Party (PS) first secretary Olivier Faure unveiled a headline immigration measure for his 2027 presidential primary campaign: a mass regularisation of roughly 400,000 undocumented workers currently active in the French economy. Faure cited Spain’s 2026 programme, which granted one-year work permits to half a million irregular migrants, as proof that “the sky doesn’t fall when you bring people out of the shadows.” France has not carried out a large-scale amnesty since the Mauroy government of 1981, preferring ad-hoc ‘regularisation au fil de l’eau’ that confers 20–30,000 residence permits each year. Critics argue that the backlog of irregular residents has nevertheless swollen to an Interior-Ministry estimate of 700,000, fuelled in part by digital bottlenecks in the online residence-permit portal (ANEF). Faure’s plan would target migrants who can prove a minimum period of residence and an employment relationship in sectors facing chronic labour shortages—echoing the limited ‘métiers en tension’ channel introduced in the 2024 immigration law but on a vastly larger scale. Business federations reacted cautiously. France Industrie fears that an amnesty without streamlined renewal paths would merely postpone legal uncertainty for employers. Conversely, the hospitality and construction confederations welcomed the idea, noting that acute staffing gaps have already forced some projects to rely on posted workers from neighbouring EU states. The conservative opposition dismissed the proposal as an "irresponsible pull factor" and called instead for stricter quotas and faster removals. From a global-mobility perspective, the debate matters because it foreshadows potential changes to France’s labour-market tests and work-permit pipelines. If a future left-leaning government embraces the amnesty concept, multinational companies could gain access to a newly regularised talent pool—but would also need to monitor compliance rules around contract transitions and minimum-wage enforcement. The proposal lands as Parliament scrutinises secondary legislation to implement the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, highlighting how national politics may diverge sharply from Brussels-centric control agendas.
Source: Public Sénat
