La Vanguardia
August 26, 2007
French Prime Minister François Fillon, defended today the expulsion of undocumented immigrants in the face of the critiques launched by social associations and after the recent incidents in the illegal flights to repatriate immigrants. "There is no other solution. France can not take all the people who want to come in here", assured Fillon before the cameras of TF1 News.
After pointing that the same applies to "all other" European countries, he said that the head of the Spanish Government, J.L. Rodríguez Zapatero, with whom he met in late July, "regrets it bitterly for having regularized hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants" and "he has taken the compromise not to do it again".
"Our economies, our social and cultural systems can not bear an uncontrolled addition of foreign population", said Fillon. He reiterated that those who don't have the intention to stay in France must be repatriated.
The first draft that will examine the French Parliament in an extraordinary session, starting on September 18th, will harden the conditions for the family regroupping for immigrants. "It is about orienting immigration towards the labour market"; those who "have house and job are welcomed", said Fillon.
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ABC
August 28, 2007
Spanish Government President J.L. Rodríguez Zapatero said today that the process of regularisation of immigrants that his government undertook was "necessary, convenient and positive", and underlined that "no one can work as an illegal".
Zapatero used these words after the polemical situation provoked by the declaration of French Prime Minister, François Fillon, where he assured that the Spanish president regreted having undertaken this process.
In a brief statement right before meeting with the new President of the Principality of Asturias, Vicente Álvarez Areces, where he is spending an eight-day vacation, Zapatero said that he did not regret the process of regularisation of immigrants that he undertook in 2005. On the contrary, Zapatero assured that he believes that "the French Government will issue a note to correct what could have been a wrong interpretation".
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El Mundo
August 29, 2007
French Prime Minister François Fillon had a phone conversation with Rodríguez Zapatero on wednesday, "to dispel any misunderstanding" over the declarations of Fillon where he assured that the Spanish President regreted the regularisation of 700,000 immigrants in 2005.
According to the note by the French press service, Fillon "assured" to Zapatero that "France understood that the massive regularisation of clandestine immigrants" that he had undertook right after arriving to office was, at that time, "the only solution to put an end to a complex and delicate situation".
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