FRENCH papers print acres of newsprint about it. Radio and television report little else. Go outside and chances are you'll walk into a demonstration. The French population is inflamed over one unglamorous issue: immigration.
Yet when the Interior Minister, Jean-Louis Debre, presented his draft law to the French National Assembly two months ago, the opposition Socialists didn't even bother to show up. It was only this month, with the February 9th victory of the extreme right-wing National Front (FN) candidate, Catherine Megret, in Vitrolles that France woke up.
The FN claims immigrants are the source of France's problems, and it wants to send them back where they came from. If the Front ever comes to power, the Debre law could help them do it.
The debate has given a new term to the French political vocabulary: the "Le Pen-isation of minds", after Jean-Marie Le Pen the FN's leader. Two-thirds of demonstrators questioned at the weekend cited the Vitrolles election and the "Le Pen-isation of minds" as their motive for marching against the Debre law.
Opinion polls show that 69 per cent of the French approve of the modified draft law, since the government withdrew the infamous Article I that would have required French people to report on foreigners who stay with them.
But the protests continue. Mr Debre attacked his opponents "lies, hypocrisy and manipulation" yesterday. It will take three days for parliament to wade through the text and its 84 proposed amendments but, with a solid centre-right majority, there is little doubt it will pass.
In the meantime, the left-leaning crowds who mustered 100,000 protesters at the weekend will be jeering under the windows of the National Assembly against a law they consider both racist and unjust
The head of the legislative commission said eloquently that one passed such a law "with a trembling hand". It still contains many controversial measures: until now, 10-year residence cards were automatically renewed. Article 4b allows the administration to cancel the permit "if the presence of the foreigner constitutes a threat to public order". In other words, the FN could fulfil its promise to expel the foreigners they accuse of "soiling national identity" without even changing the law.
The bill would allow immigration agents to make unannounced visits to the homes of French people housing foreigners. It would double the amount of time from 24 to 48 hours - that police can hold a foreigner without a judge's order. And it would allow police to search vehicles, except private cars, within 20 km of French borders. So much for the Schengen accords on free movement within the EU. French police would be allowed to confiscate the passport of any foreigner illegally in France.
The opposition Socialists, who lost in Vitrolles, are again the losers. Caught between protesters and opinion polls in the government's favour, the Socialist party leader, Lionel Jospin, couldn't make up his mind. He bragged, "We've won" when Article I was withdrawn, but then refused to take a position on the revised text. In the French tradition of artistes engages intellectuals filled the void left by politicians.
The film director, Bertrand Tavernier, the actress, Catherine Deneuve, and the philosopher, Bernard Henri-Levi, are a few of the personalities leading the revolt against the Debre law. French intellectuals seem to need to espouse just causes: the Dreyfus affair and the Algerian war are two examples. For all their pontificating, they usually get it right. Les intellos hadn't embraced a cause so passionately since they denounced the massacre of Bosnian Muslims.
The former prime minister, Michel Rocard, was the only Socialist politician to denounce firmly the entire draft law. "They pretend they're talking about immigrants, foreigners," he wrote in Le Monde. "But people know it's not Swiss, Americans or Australians they want to watch. It's `the other', the one who isn't like me, the one whom Mr Megret [Catherine Megret's husband and the FN's deputy leader] doesn't mind naming: the Arab, the black, the yellow man, the Jew."
The ultimate irony is that one in four French people has an immigrant parent or grandparent, including the FN mayor, Catherine Megret, whose Jewish grandparents fled Russia.
Historically France prided itself on being a land of asylum. Yet successive waves of immigration have provoked a backlash. In the mid-19th century, Belgians who had come to build Haussmann's Paris were expelled when the economy worsened.
A few decades later, there were anti-Italian riots. Poles arrived en masse early in this century; they were considered dirty and blamed for en me. The proportion of African and Arab immigrants has risen compared to Europeans in recent decades, but foreigners constitute a mere 6.4 per cent of the French population, the same percentage as in 1931.
