c. 1996 Religion News Service
PARIS (RNS)-Like thousands of other immigrants, Slimane Lahiane is never caught without his French residency permit. But the document is not foolproof insurance against trouble.”I get asked for my papers all the time, and once I was beaten by a cop for no apparent reason,”said the 21-year-old, who like many native Algerians does not have a job.
His fellow Algerian nationals would hardly be surprised by the incident.”I know a lot of people who are hassled by the police,”said Sami Azlow, 25, who emigrated from Algeria 10 years ago and works legally as a waiter.”I’ve never been stopped because I have a job, don’t hang around at night and always look like I’m going somewhere,”he said, sipping mint tea at a bar filled with cigarette smoke.
Many of France’s immigrants from North Africa are not so fortunate. They are being squeezed by a weak economy, a 12 percent jobless rate, and rising ethnic tensions that followed last year’s attacks on civilians by Islamic fundamentalists.
The agitation has spawned government proposals to clamp down on clandestine immigrants, many of whom face deportation. It is cited for increased racially motivated attacks, a surge in popularity among right-wing political groups and a worsening of relations between Muslim minorities and French nationals.”Many Muslims pay taxes, they have jobs and apartments and they contribute to the society,”said Hassan Arfaoui, an immigration specialist at the Arab World Institute.”But now there is total confusion in France between the Muslim, the immigrant and the terrorist. There is an institutional bias against the Muslims.” That may seem odd in a country where long-established Arab residents, many of them practicing Muslims, consider themselves Frenchmen from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, not North Africans living in France.
Sociologist Michele Tribalat found in a recent study that only 5 percent of the men who pray at one of France’s 80 mosques speak Arabic. Of Algerians, 92 percent can read and write in French but only 8 percent speak Arabic.
Hocine Toualbi, 32, is one of an estimated 620,000 Algerians living in France. He emigrated 17 years ago. Last year he bought the butcher shop in which he had worked for eight years.”I feel French, my wife is French, our 2-year-old is French,”he said from behind the meat counter.
But Toualbi, clearly proud of his success, said,”I can see how it would be difficult for a young Arab. There is a lot of pressure from the state because of the simplification that if an Arab does something wrong, they’re all bad.” Two doors down the street at his fabric store, R. Benhamou, who was born in Morocco and immigrated to France 15 years ago, is not optimistic about the future, despite the fact that three of his four children have jobs and the fourth is a student.”There’s no future for an emigre in France,”he said.”People who are hungry come here and they look for work and can’t find it. The French used to welcome immigrants to do manual labor but they have been replaced by machines.”(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Across Europe and in the United States, similar economic pressures have fueled nationalist resentment toward illegal and legal immigrants.
The most obvious spokesman for reversing immigration patterns in the United States is one-time presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.
In Germany, attacks against Turks have climbed dramatically. Most of the 2 million immigrants are not eligible for citizenship. When reporters asked why, Wolfgang Schauble, of the Christian Democrats, said Germany is a”community of destiny and ancestry.” Anti-immigration politics in Austria’s December national election helped Jorg Haider, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, capture 1 million votes in a country of 8 million people. Haider is suspected of retaining ties to former Nazi Party members.
And in Italy, a sizeable percentage of voters who support the former fascist candidate Gianfranco Fini in the upcoming April 21 general elections favor tougher action to stem immigration.
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France’s link with its immigrant population of about 4 million has not always been fragile. Algeria’s former colonial ruler had among the least restrictive immigration laws in the West. Even after turning off the faucet to immigration in 1974, successive governments made exceptions for family members of emigres, workers and academics like Arfaoui, who arrived 10 years ago. Ten-year visas were routinely renewed.
What’s more, the restrictions were often violated or finessed.”There were many clandestine immigrants, and the government knew, but as long as there were jobs and peace, it did nothing,”Arfaoui said.
But last year, tensions with immigrants flared due to civil struggle in Algeria and the assassination in Paris last July of Abdelbaki Sahroui, an imam-or Muslim spiritual leader-belonging to the outlawed Algerian Islamic Salvation Front. A wave of bomb attacks against civilians in Paris and Lyon that followed killed eight and injured 170. The Algerian Armed Islamic Group said it set off some of the explosions.
French authorities clamped down on the Algerian community in the Belleville and Rochechouart neighborhoods on the northeast side of town. They conducted raids and more than 1 million random identity checks. About 150 suspects were arrested. Most are awaiting trial.
Support surged for the anti-immigrant National Front, headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen. A recent independent poll put its popularity at 18 percent, the highest showing in 20 years.
Violence against minorities also increased. France’s human rights commission said in March that seven people were killed in racist-related attacks last year, up from one incident in 1994. Six of the seven victims were of North African origin, the panel said.
The commission also warned that xenophobic attitudes were on the rise throughout the country.”After the terrorist attacks every time people saw a Muslim they’d think terrorist,”said Delphine Batho, assistant director of SOS Racism, which promotes the rights of minorities.”It’s created a phobia against them.” Dalil Boubakeur, administrative director of the Muslim Institute at the Paris Mosque, said,”Terrorism gave confirmation to all those who said that Islam was a religion of violence.” Prime Minister Alain Juppe said the government has no intention of disturbing law-abiding legal immigrants. Its main target, he said, are clandestine immigrants.
But the government has been accused of being heavy-handed. It has carried out 15 mass expulsions of illegal immigrants since May. A proposal by Interior Minister Jean-Louis Debre that would make 10-year visa renewal for legal immigrants tougher has gained steam.”This is not an efficient way to fight against clandestine people and, if approved, it would create a general suspicion toward immigrants who are here legally,”Batho said.
Boubakeur agreed, saying the only long-term solution to reduce tensions is through assimilation. Young unemployed Muslims who are drawn to extremism”must have a stake in this society. Only through education and job training can you do that,”he said.
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In fact, many of France’s Muslims, favoring assimilation over isolation, agree with the government’s ban against Muslim girls wearing traditional veils to public schools.”France has a strong separation between church and state,”Boubakeur said. The wall is intended”to insure there is no favoritism, whether it’s among Catholics or Muslims,”he said.
But Batho said she worries that quick and decisive actions, like expulsions, will continue as long as the conservative government feels threatened by the rise of the far-right National Front.”The government is hoping that it can gain support from the National Front by doing this,”she said.
The National Front, which would deny legal residency for anyone not born of French nationals, agrees that its relatively strong popularity is responsible for the recent crackdown.”The French people are fed up and they fear that this government is the same as the socialists were,”said Jacques H. Dore, the Front’s director of international relations.”They see that nothing is happening, so what they’re saying is, why not the National Front?”
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