In case you hadn't heard, the French Sarkozy Government is forcing the issue of national identity into the forefront.
Who is French? How French should one be if they are to be considered French?
Could I see your papers, please?
How about your parents and grandparents?
People who were born in France of naturalized French citizens are now being made to supply proof of their parents identity before their identity papers can be renewed.
With out your national identity card, you cannot apply or hold a French passport. You are subject to deportation if it is deemed desireable.
On todays news and on the front page of Liberation, there were tragic stories of people who had lived here their entire lives, held national identity cards and passports and suddenly found that they coud not renew them and that perhaps, in the eyes of a zealous bureaucrat, they had never really been French!
Of course, this was more apt to happen if you were dark skinned or of Northern African Origin, or had a non western family name. This is totally new, the wording on the form you must use to renew your card has suddenly changed. But, please, don't get too upset. It's not like this was Germany. It's France.
4 comments:
This story sounds familiar, but where? When?
May I see your papers?
Well, on a positive note, the government has never been more unpopular ansd this might be a tipping point.
After I wrote this, there was a televised debate between Jean- Francois Cope, the head of the UMP/Sarko Party who is more outspokenly right than Sarko and Francois Hollande, who is a major figure in the Socialist party.
Both are brilliant debaters, Cope is a real snake, a brilliant lawyer, but Hollande is equally brilliat and he trounced Cope using logic and most deadly, his rapid fire dead pan humor and sarcasm....
Even his opponents must have been rolling on the floor watching Hollande's performance.
Most of all, he made the rights position ridiculous.
Hello Microdot,
One could say that this is just history repeating itself. During WWII, there were many in France who had no problem helping the concurring Germans round up Jews and shipping them off to concentration camps.
In WW2, under the occupation, there was a resistance movement.
France has really tried to come to grips with its Vichy history. To be conquered and traumatized and given hope to avoid the massive catastrophe that WW1 was for France...
The resistance was heroic and also had to fight the complacent French who would rather turn them in than deal with the consequences of their actions.
It took a while to really tell the history of trhe Resistance in France ecause under DeGaulle, the involvement of the Communists was an embarrassment. The Communists had the organization and the idealism that drove the French resistance. In the end, Degaulle screwed them for his own political vision of France.
But now, again, there is a real resistance. Families are being hidden. There is a network of concerned teachers and parents.
The illegal immigrants in Pas de Calais are being helped and fed in the cold y the mayors of villages against the wishes of the Government.
People are risking fines and possible jail sentences to do these things. The government is denying that they do it even as they do it.
The Minister of Immigration proudly announced that he had ordered 29,000 deportations this year...2,000 over the quota...
Yes, there was a quota.
Un peu vichyesque?
When do the denunciations start.
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