PARIS — A new bill introduced Tuesday in Parliament is aimed at toughening immigration rules - including stripping naturalized citizens of their nationality if they threaten the lives of police.
President Nicolas Sarkozy initiated the measure as a means to quash crime.
“This is not a dangerous security excess,” said Immigration Minister Eric Besson, opening what was certain to be several days of noisy debate in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.
The bill “lays the first stones of a European project,” he said, noting that the bill largely satisfies the terms of an EU immigration pact that all 27 members must translate into law.
“The European Union must not be a supermarket of social protections,” Besson said.
The bill includes measures that target fellow European Union citizens who abuse the generous French social-welfare system or overstay their welcome. Those measures include tougher punishment for those found guilty of “aggressive begging.”
France has already expelled hundreds of Gypsies, primarily to Romania, moves that have been condemned by the EU and the Vatican.
However, opponents said the most concerning aspect of the bill was an amendment that would strip citizenship from people naturalized less than 10 years ago if they endanger police or other authorities.
“This is unconstitutional,” said Socialist lawmaker Serge Blisko. “You’ve invented a new status: French of the second zone,” he said during debate, “a new sword of Damocles.”
Some 45 associations - human-rights, aid and religious groups - were holding a demonstration outside the National Assembly.
Currently, a citizen can lose French nationality for treason or terrorism. Americans, too, can lose their citizenship if convicted of committing treason or swearing an oath of allegiance to another country - but not through conviction of a violent crime.
Sarkozy suggested modifying the rules for stripping nationality in a July 30 speech in which he announced a “national war” on crime that notably hits hard on aliens who disobey the law.
The bill under discussion Tuesday is the fifth proposed change in seven years to France’s rules aimed at controlling the migratory flux and the second since Sarkozy took office in 2007.
Information for this article was contributed from Paris by Associated Press Television News.
Front Section, Pages 10 on 09/29/2010