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French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid out on Thursday a proposal on immigration crackdowns as one of the key reforms that his country will be pushing when it takes the EU presidency in July for six months. Though his plan would target immigrants coming into the European Union, Sarkozy’s main focus is on illegal Muslim immigrants (from the Middle East and North Africa), which trouble most southern European states.
The volatile issue of immigration has been debated in France for years. In fact, Sarkozy used it as one of his key platforms to become president. France is one of the more xenophobic countries in Europe, and Sarkozy has been able to push this topic in France for two reasons. First, he is not far-right, but more centrist, which prevents the debate from seeming extremist. Second, Sarkozy himself is not ethnically French, but of Hungarian-Jewish descent — countering those who would accuse him of being unsympathetic to legal immigrants.
As EU president, Sarkozy will be able to make immigration reform a European Union-wide priority. His goal will be to change the terms of the debate in order to make EU members both more flexible and more coherent when dealing with the highly sensitive topic of immigration — because, to many, European immigration debates tend to turn into a more racial set of issues.
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