PARIS, Sept 10: Thousands of illegal aliens marched throughout France this weekend — 3000 of them in Paris alone — in hopes that Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy would decide to accord residency status to all of France’s illegal immigrants, whose number is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

Mr Sarkozy — who had announced upon taking office in the spring that solving France’s immigration problem would be accorded a high priority during his term as minister — announced early last week that he had instructed immigration authorities to study the situation of France’s illegals on a “case by case” basis, asking them to “identify those legal or social situations that proved difficult to settle according to existing laws.”

That decision was taken after several thousand, among them political refugees, decided to occupy the Basilica of Saint-Denis in suburban Paris, the church where traditionally France’s kings have been crowned.