January 7, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 3, 1423

PARIS, Jan 6: France is expected to promulgate early in the new year a new immigration policy that would increase significantly the number of foreigners allowed into the country — from 50,000 at present to between 100,000 and 200,000 — but also would be selective as to which immigrants would be admitted.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the principal architect of France’s immigration policy and author of the new law that is expected to be presented before Parliament shortly, is known to prefer a US-style plan which would set quotas on immigrants allowed into the country, notably according to their profession and country of origin.

Mr Sarkozy began to study the question during a visit to the United States in late summer, and, according to his entourage, is said to have remained in touch with his American interlocutors ever since.

It’s largely on the “tolerance zero” policy of the New York police department, with whom he visited last summer, that the French interior minister has based France’s own new policy on tolerance of crimes and delinquants, a policy which, says his entourage, has already produced results, with crime, notably in the Paris region, having shown a considerable decline since the arrival in power of the government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin last June.

Now, according to his advisers, he is likely to introduce a similar US-style approach to immigration when he unveils shortly France’s new immigration law.

For the moment, the only other cabinet member to be solidly opposed to a quota-based immigration policy is Francois Fillon, the Social Affairs minister, who is presently drafting his own proposed law, which takes as its point of departure the idea of a “contract of integration” as proposed by President Chirac early last Fall.

But, Mr Sarkozy is known to believe that Mr Fillon’s ideas can very well be included in his own projected law, without affecting the thrust of the new policy he espouses, then too he has recently been supported in his approach by a governmental study group, the Observatoire francais des conjonctures economiques (OFCE), which in a report published late December, recommended that the French government that it do everything in its power to attract more qualified immigrants, indeed import annually at least 100,000 immigrants, especially if it wants to maintain its economic growth, indeed its place in the world.

Especially as, underlined the report, France will have a problem maintaining its present growth rate if it continues to allow the number of qualified workers in certain sectors to fall.

Mr Sarkozy is known to want to establish special quotas in his law that would bring to France more immigrants who specialize in such areas as construction and informatics.

The two sectors are in need of fresh blood if they are to continue to thrive in France, which is not only the home of such international construction giants as Bouygues and Vinci, but also of several major computer-related companies largely based in the Paris region and at Sophia Antipolis, on the Mediterranean coast.