the list of professions in tension should be published “at the end of February”

Provided for by the immigration law promulgated at the beginning of 2024, the update of the list of professions in shortage in which undocumented workers can be regularized should be published “end of February”said Labor Minister Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet on Sunday. “With (the Minister of the Interior) Bruno Retailleau, we are working on the question of the regularization of undocumented immigrants, since we must sign a circular together”she declared in an interview with France Inter/France Télévisions/Le Monde. This text, expected soon, must tighten the admission criteria which enabled 34,724 people to obtain papers in 2023, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior.

It must replace the Valls circular which, since 2012, allows a foreigner in an irregular situation to request a “exceptional admission to stay” (AES) for family, economic or student reasons. It is up to the prefect to accept it or not. “The problem with the Valls circular is that it required the person in an irregular situation who was working to ask their boss for authorization”explained the minister. “What would be a real novelty today would be, thanks to the law, to be able to spontaneously request regularization without being in the hands of the boss”she continued.

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Rewriting of the Valls circular

The Ministries of Labor and the Interior have mapped “region by region” professions in tension, “all qualification levels combined”explained Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, specifying that“engineers and master’s students” represent “a third of economic immigration”. Asked about the date of publication of the list of professions concerned, she indicated that she had “engaged with social partners” on “end of February”. A few weeks after his arrival at Place Beauvau, Bruno Retailleau, returned to the Bayrou government, announced the rewriting of the Valls circular. This allows prefectures to regularize some 30,000 undocumented workers per year through work or for family reasons.

To be eligible, an undocumented worker must have lived in France for at least three years and have at least two years of work. There were 11,525 of them who benefited from it in 2023. “What I like with Bruno Retailleau, (…) we agree, we don’t agree, but it’s a form of backbone”declared the minister about her colleague from Beauvau. “This is part of the search for compromise. We can have different political histories (…), but we can also agree on the need for order, security and sovereign justice.she justified.