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Originally Posted by Manji
Damn! France banned polygamy in 1993?! So, it was legal, till then, to have multiple spouses?!
I knew those french were perverted but this just proves it!  |
No, to make it short polygamy was legal in some of our overseas colonies (Mayotte if I'm not mistaken, a Muslim island near Madagascar) because they had a special status, and also in our former colonies in Subsaharan Africa.
As Black "workers" already established in France have the right to make their families come to France (Family Regrouping Act in 1976), some (if not most) of them "invited" their numerous wives and children. French administration generally tolerated it until 1993 either because these families weren't French citizens (the ones from Africa) or because they had their special status (the ones from Mayotte)
But in 1993 Pasqua (a very, very conservative politician, a friend of Le Pen) became Minister of Interior and as he wanted to reduce immigration he decided to ban polygamy (more precisely, he decided to ban the Family Reprouping Act for polygamous families and that an immigrant living in France could only "invit" one wife), thinking that these Africans with multiple wives would come back to their countries. Err... It didn't work.