what is wrong with seeking shelter in an otherwise unused building?!!!! i am unfortunately not surprised by the 'but they broke the law!!' whiners, but really can't we just use our brains for a minute? not everybody who seeks to live in a unoccupied building is 'poor' or a threat to the security we all seem to cling so desperately to these days.. wake up!
let people live the way they want as long as they do not seek to harm you! and as for the immigration problem , talk to the countries who invaded/immigrated in the first place...hmmm let's see....the british, there's a good start, or the french..they surely have a lot to answer for, or how about the good ole yankee doodles...they sure like to spread their eagle wings...

if you have a problem with someone, try talking about it. otherwise you end up hating entire communities you probably know very little about and then you become miserable.

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Edited by author 06-30-2003 12:54 AM
but, didn't many of the folks who are "illegally" residing in FRANCE come from former FRENCH colonies? if anyone should be developing DEMOCRACY and ECONOMY in places like maybe AFRICA, it should be FRANCE who once thought she could rule others.

Edited by author 06-29-2003 06:55 AM
I agree 100% these are illegal immigrants and even though that doesnt mean we should not handle this matter with humanity and compasion France has only one option: remove them from French territory. Of course, every case should be studied and political refugee welcomed but France cannot accept the whole world misery. Remember justice is just and blind. If you start to look into it differently it's no longer justice. People complaining about this should rather spend their time developping democracy and economy in the countries these poor guys came from so that they would not have to come to France.

Soooo...they're illegal immigrants who have been illegally squatting in abandoned buildings. That the French police are throwing them out isn't a tragedy, it's a triumph.

Clearly the French police can do that. And did. I wish we could hire their local government to do some consulting for my city. It takes forever to run people out of abandonded houses here it seems.

In very general terms, the UK (like the US) is under a common-law system, unlike France's civil law system. Thus, squatters probably have many more rights versus the state than they do in France. However, what will be interesting is if this group takes their case to the EU Court for Human Rights - which would be somewhat likely to trump the French law.

Ah, well. Trust Google to come up with something...

Here's a UK site that deals with squatters' rights:

http://www.squat.freeserve.co.uk/

It's got many good links to legal issues in the UK.

As for France, there doesn't seem to be much, though there's an article here -- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jan2003/fran-j30.shtml -- that talks about laws that target the poor and/or homeless.

Unseelie: exactly. "Without paper" ("sans papier") is the French official euphemism for illegal immigrant. I'm not commenting this specific case as I don't know the facts, I'm just mentioning the general state of mind in this country (which I left since I couldn't stand that socialist overwhelming vibe anymore.) The matter of the fact is, these "sans papier" by definition broke the law.

Kill Me Sarah: I'd be curious as to how illegal immigrants could possibly have regular jobs (it's illegal to employ them) and pay taxes (except VAT which is collected at the point of sale,) but it's true quite a few of them manage to collect state welfare...

Are there any "squatters' rights" laws in France? A friend of mine knowledgable about such things tells me that London has very strong squatters' rights laws: something like, if a building is left empty for so many months, and people begin to squat in it and do so for such and such amount of time, the squatters gain the rights to use the building. (I don't know if ownership is given to the squatters.) Anyone know about this?

Because I'm french, I probably misunderstood the word "deporting" that sounds so terrific...

These people live in france, they have jobs, they pay taxes, and in this conditions, I really don't know why they have to be thrown out of france. Because they don't have papers they, generally, can't have decent housing.

But above all, there's no reason to lose humanity and the french police can't treat people like the way they do in this case.

I know this won't be PC, but if they're without papers, wouldn't that mean that they shouldn't be in France in the first place? In addition to evicting them from buildings that are likely not safe, shouldn't they be deporting them as well?