The Lot department in southern France was the first to take action against France's new immigration law. "It was like a cry from the heart this morning," said Serge Rigal, president of the department. Outraged by the adoption of the controversial bill on Tuesday, December 19, he announced on Wednesday morning that he refused to "apply national preference."

Article 19 of the law stipulates that to benefit from the allocation personnalisée d'autonomie (aid for lodging, or APA), paid for by departments, a foreigner must provide proof of at least five years residence or two and a half years of tax contribution. Rigal, however, refused to draw a distinction between the French and other nationalities. "This aid," he said, "is allocated to dependent people who are at home, can't feed themselves, get up or wash if we're not there to assist them."

Thirty-two left-wing departments in turn issued a joint communiqué on Wednesday afternoon, denouncing the freshly voted law as "a disgrace to our country of human rights." They refuse, they write, "the application of the APA component of this bill inspired by the far right, carried by a government which claimed to embody moderation and which is now only the illustration of compromising behavior."

The president of the Seine-Saint-Denis department northeast of Paris, Stéphane Troussel, wrote to his local authority's employees on Wednesday morning to tell them that benefits will be paid "under the same conditions as today, to all the residents of Seine-Saint-Denis, whatever their origin or nationality." Troussel denounced a law "that draws a legal line between the French and legal foreigners, that goes back on the droit du sol and that goes back on what France has always been for over two centuries."

In Loire-Atlantique, western France, Michel Ménard, also a Socialist, felt the same. He said he hoped that "the Constitutional Council will invalidate the most wicked provisions" of the law.

Following in their footsteps, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo (Parti Socialiste) told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that her city, which is also a department, was joining the rebels. "We will apply the rights and constitutional principles of our country. The City of Paris will not apply national preference for our elderly with regard to the APA," she declared, calling the law "shameful."

Others, however, have not joined the rebellion. The head of the northern France Eure department, Alexandre Rassaërt, who came from the right and is close to Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu, welcomed the law's adoption on X. "This strengthening of migration policy is in line with the will of the French and the national interest," he tweeted. Essonne, south of Paris, president François Durovray (Les Républicains, right) pointed out that "we are in a state governed by the rule of law, and [that] a département is not an autonomous republic. Whatever you think, the law is the law. It must be applied."

You have 15% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.