“We have to be much tougher towards the Comoros,” asserts Bruno Retailleau

Despite the controversy sparked by his remarks on the need to legislate on immigration to rebuild Mayotte, the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau persists. Guest on BFMTV this Wednesday morning, he declared that “we will no longer be able to do as before” in terms of immigration in Mayotte, promising in particular to be “much tougher towards the Comoros”.

“We know very well that there is a Comorian policy which ultimately consists of letting […] There is a form, the word is probably too strong, of hybrid war if I dare say, by pushing populations towards Mayotte to create a sort of clandestine occupation,” he declared while he was asked about the situation of the French archipelago devastated by the deadly passage of Cyclone Chido.

“Totally uncontrolled” immigration

“Of course, now is the time,” said the Minister of the Interior, when asked about the advisability of taking such a position. “We have left the Mahorais alone in the face of their misfortune, with this immigration which is completely uncontrolled,” highlighted the minister who opened the way, like his predecessor in Beauvau, to a questioning of land rights in Mayotte.

“In the Mamoudzou maternity ward, it is the largest French maternity ward, one child born per hour and unfortunately 74% of these children are mothers who are in hiding,” explained the minister. “It is enough, even when you are illegal, to give birth in these conditions, so that tomorrow the child when he or she comes of age becomes French himself,” he said.

“He knows nothing about the subject,” says Fabien Roussel

In Mayotte, since the asylum and immigration law of 2018, nationality law is already derogatory. It must be proven that at least one of the two parents had been in a legal situation for more than three months when the child was born. Bruno Retailleau plans to extend this deadline to “one year”.

“They are one and the same people”, “we must consider that they are not strangers to each other”, reacted this morning the national secretary of the French Communist Party Fabien Roussel on RTL.

“He doesn’t know anything about it. He doesn’t even sleep there,” continued Fabien Roussel “The ministers don’t even sleep in Mayotte because there is no four-star hotel, it’s the shame of the Republic.”