PARIS, Dec 10: France is to circulate this week new guidelines — the first to be issued since 1998 — that should permit the country’s estimated 300,000 refugees to receive better treatment and have their applications for residency or refugee status handled more rapidly than before.

According to the 15-page document, police authorities are being told to be more humane in their treatment of immigrants, most of whom arrived in France with a simple tourist visa, coming from such countries as Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Romania, Bulgaria, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal.

The guidelines are codenamed the “Sarkozy circular” — after French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the principal author of the new policy on displaces persons.