Tens of Thousands in Paris Protest Proposed Immigration Crackdown

Danielle Mitterrand, the widow of the former French president, turned out Saturday afternoon. Celebrated figures in France’s film industry came. So did throngs of ordinary men and women, including Jacques Cadelec, who wore a boldly lettered sign on his chest: “Immigrants’ grandson.”

“My grandparents came to Paris at the beginning of the century from Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy,” said the 60-year-old aerospace engineer, who lives in the capital’s suburbs. “They came because there was no work in the home provinces. And that’s the same reason immigrants today come to France. Not because they want to take jobs from the French.”

By the tens of thousands, people rallied beneath sunny Parisian skies to march against a proposed law that would crack down on clandestine immigration to France. Similar protests took place in Lyons, Toulouse, Dijon and other provincial cities.

The conservative government of Prime Minister Alain Juppe has already said it will modify the bill, which in its original version would have required French citizens hosting foreigners to inform authorities when their guests left. But the draft legislation remains a hot-button issue, with a growing number of opponents calling it emblematic of the advances of far-right, anti-foreigner sentiment in the country.

The opposition to the proposed legislation has been led by movie directors, writers, theater workers and other well-known cultural figures, with the leading parties of the left, the Socialists and Communists, getting on the bandwagon late.

Actor Pierre Arditi, one of several figures from the French film industry who took part in the Paris march, called the bill evidence of “hatred and suspicion toward foreigners, who are always the scapegoat in times of crisis.”

In addition, the bill has crystallized frustration and outrage over the failure of the country’s traditional political parties, left and right, to halt the electoral successes of the far-right National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The debate over the immigration law, former Defense Minister Francois Leotard wrote, is really about what kind of country France is. Saturday’s protesters gave their reply in a chant as they marched through Paris’ Right Bank: “First, second or third generation, we are all children of immigrants.”

Police estimated the turnout at 33,000, while organizers said 150,000 came. The actual number was probably somewhere in the middle. Some participants wore the yellow star that Jews were ordered to display during the Nazi occupation. Others carried suitcases as though they were being expelled from the country.

“This is the same valise I had when I arrived in France 34 years ago,” said one middle-aged man from Portugal, who refused to give his name.

The protest march began at the Gare de l’Est, the train station from which many French Jews were deported to Nazi Germany during World War II. Some well-known members of the French Jewish community had spoken out against comparing the situation of foreigners in France today with that of the Jews under the Vichy regime.

But foes of the bill objected that in its original form, it would have required them to inform on their guests to French police.

Danielle Mitterrand, the widow of Francois Mitterrand and a champion of human rights causes, also drew an analogy with those times, comparing her intention to disobey the new law if it is passed to her father’s wartime opposition to Vichy France rule.

The campaign against the bill began with the publication of a call for civil disobedience from a group of young French filmmakers. It snowballed to include similar appeals from writers, psychiatrists, gays and lesbians, French citizens who sheltered Jewish refugees during the war, university students and other groups.

As the wave of protests mounted, the Socialists, the leading opposition party in parliament, seemed uncertain what to do--and concerned about appearing overly in favor of immigration, which many French see as a major reason that their country has more than 3 million jobless.