Macron's Immigration Policy Offends Pretty Much Everyone

Following the Italian election, French President Macron noted that rising populism and anti-establishment (and anti-Europe) sentiment was linked to growing unease over immigration policies. It won't have escaped him that former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose center-left party lost badly, was once the darling of the media, technocracy and European elite too.

Macron is relying on a new and controversial law to fix France's dysfunctional immigration policy and hopefully prevent a similar fate. The law promises to streamline the processing of asylum applications while introducing tough penalties, including detention, for undocumented immigrants. It is popular with the French right, but viewed as a serious breaking of the faith on the left, the bedrock of Macron's majority. Many in his own party remembered his statements praising Merkel's 2015 stance toward migrants in Germany and calling refugees the "heroes" of modern times.