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05/12/2005:

"France rejects migrant amnesty"

The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, yesterday unveiled a package of tough new anti-immigration measures and warned that mass amnesties for migrants who had entered the country illegally were "completely out of the question".
Unlike the Spanish government, which this week issued residency and work permits to some 700,000 illegal workers, Mr de Villepin said Paris considered that previous mass amnesties, in 1981 and 1997, had encouraged further waves of illegal immigration.

"It is essential that we be extremely strict and firm," he said. Putting the number of illegal immigrants in France at "between 200,000 and 400,000", he said the phenomenon had become "a growing source of concern because of the mafia-like activities that feed these criminal networks."
Full: guardian.co.uk