France Rejects Migrant Amnesty

The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, yesterday unveiled a package of tough new anti-immigration measures and warned that mass amnesties for migrants who had entered the country illegally were "completely out of the question".

Unlike the Spanish government, which this week issued residency and work permits to some 700,000 illegal workers, Mr de Villepin said Paris considered that previous mass amnesties, in 1981 and 1997, had encouraged further waves of illegal immigration.

"It is essential that we be extremely strict and firm," he said. Putting the number of illegal immigrants in France at "between 200,000 and 400,000", he said the phenomenon had become "a growing source of concern because of the mafia-like activities that feed these criminal networks."

It was currently "far, far too easy" for an immigrant to enter on a tourist visa, then stay on illegally, and, if caught, claim to have no papers and to be unaware of his nationality - preventing any expulsion.

Critics said the measures ignored the complexity of the global migration problem and would solve nothing. "It will push people to ever more extreme protests, like mass hunger strikes," said Pierre Henry of the immigrant rights body France Terre d'Asile.

Mr de Villepin's plan, which builds on draconian measures introduced two years ago by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, will change the civil code to ensure that marriages between foreigners and French citizens conducted abroad will not necessarily be recognised in France. "A prosecutor will check carefully that the union is genuine," the minister said. He also aims to introduce "biometric" visas that record the holder's fingerprint, making it far more difficult for anyone else to use the visa.

He announced the formation of an independent "immigration police", and an immigration control service to coordinate the immigration activities of the police, gendarmerie, local authorities and various government departments.