To regulate foreign labor

They want to provide us with one more administration: an office. Of the high cost of living, no doubt? Or of foreign exchange? That, at least, is important and urgent.

No. It is an immigration office. For this, at a time when we cannot find money for civil servants, we will easily find eight million. The main disadvantage of mixing administrative innovations into the finance law is that we do not have time to study them seriously with the best intentions in the world, the Finance Commission, if it decides lightly, runs a great risk of making a mistake.

It seems that the ministerial services which today monitor the entry, conduct and interests of foreign workers in France are scattered among several ministries and ask to be brought together. This can be supported, and coordination is always desirable. It should also be noted that since 1919 there has been an interministerial immigration commission at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, specifically charged with "coordination".

One of two things: either this commission coordinates, and then we wonder why so many millions would be needed this year to ensure an already established cohesion; or this commission coordinates nothing at all, and then we wonder whether calling it an "office" will change anything, unless it is a question of creating new jobs.

The current services cost about three million annually. If we transfer these credits to an "office" which, with the same money, will do the same work, we see nothing wrong with that. But why this increase?

It could only be explained by the desire to engage, through this new organization, in the development of immigration. It is said that it is proposed to "push for the importation of labor. And this is precisely where we should reflect. That some of our depopulated regions need a supplement of foreign workers, no one denies it. That this contribution must be controlled, closely monitored, is certain. But that the State, at the taxpayers' expense, becomes the agent of this work, that is not its job and it is mistaken. If gentlemen industrialists need foreign labor, let them pay for it themselves.

Moreover, the question goes beyond the budget, because it is of a social nature. The CGT dealt with it in its national council of September 19. It also called for the creation of an office for labor, national or foreign, and an office which, far from multiplying foreign workers on our soil, limits their number to essential needs.

In the thinking of the working class, the duty of the State is here to "protect" the French worker by regulating and controlling the entry of foreign labor.

Now, if we give the immigration office significant credits, which it can only justify by increasing recruitment abroad, will it not have a tendency to develop excessive imports of foreign labor beyond measure?
Parliament did well to ask the question, but the office to be created would rather be this national labor office, this great organization for compensation of the labor market, which the CGT so rightly demands.