Guéant promises to slash immigration

INTERIOR Minister Claude Guéant has promised to bring down immigration in the next year from its present 200,000 a year to 20,000.

Speaking on Europe 1's Le Grand rendez-vous, he said he agreed with Front National leader Marine Le Pen that the number of immigrants was too high.

He said: "Why is it too high? Because I want, like the government and the president of the republic, that foreigners who come to live with us become integrated, adopt our laws and adopt our way of life."

Mr Guéant said the number of immigrants each year was the equivalent of a town such as Rennes, or twice that of Perpignan.

He added that France was not xenophobic but he was against the socialist proposal to extend the right to vote in municipal elections to non-EC residents.

"That could mean we would have foreign mayors. Frankly, I've no wish to see in Seine-Saint-Denis, which has a large immigrant population, that the majority of mayors are foreign.

Since 1789 the right to vote had been allied to nationality and people who wanted that right should become French citizens.

A poll for Le Parisien newspaper showed 61% of people were in favour of giving the right to vote to non-EC residents who had lived in France for more than five years.

The present Socialist proposals in the Senate would give such non-EC residents the right to vote and would allow them to become councillors but not mayors, assistant mayors or deputy mayors. The proposals have been rejected by President Sarkozy and his prime minister, François Fillon.

Article LO2122-4-1 of the Code Général des Collectivités Territoriales says non-French municipal councillors cannot become mayors or assistants, and cannot stand in for them.