FRANCE GETS NEW IMMIGRATION MUSEUM AS DNA ROW RAGES
Agence France Presse
Oct 10 2007
PARIS (AFP) – A new Paris museum celebrating the role of immigration
in French history opened to the public Wednesday amid a fierce row
over plans by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government to introduce
DNA tests for would-be immigrants.
Located on the eastern edge of Paris, the National Museum on the
History of Immigration was championed by former president Jacques
Chirac but historians involved have been at loggerheads with the new
government over the whole issue.
Although Chirac was to visit the site Thursday and Culture Minister
Christine Albanel to make an appearance on Wednesday, there are no
plans for a formal ribbon-cutting, opening ceremony — seen by some
as a snub to the new venture.
"This is France’s Ellis Island. It would have been natural for the
president to honour it with his presence," said historian Patrick Weil,
referring to the former immigration gateway to the United States,
now home to a museum.
Weil and eight other historians resigned this year from the museum’s
governing body in protest at Sarkozy’s creation of a ministry
of immigration and national identity, seen as a bid to court the
anti-immigrant vote.
They have also joined the chorus of protest, from left-wing critics,
religious leaders and some members of the ruling right, against a
bill currently going through parliament that would allow DNA testing
for immigrants wishing to join relatives in France.
The opening came a day after a left-wing member of Sarkozy’s
government, Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, threatened to resign
in protest over the toughening of French immigration policy.
"Speaking as an immigrant’s daughter, I’ve had enough of seeing
immigration exploited all the time … I think it’s disgusting,"
said Amara, who is of Algerian origin.
The museum is housed in a 1931 art deco building that used to be
the Paris museum of African and Oceanic arts — its collections were
transferred last year to the new Quai Branly museum of tribal arts
and cultures.
Using maps, photo and video archives, artwork and collected
bric-a-bric, it retraces two centuries of migration to France, from
southern and central Europe, from France’s former African colonies and
more recently from Asia, "to get people to understand and acknowledge"
the benefits of immigration.
>From France’s most celebrated Polish immigrant, Nobel-winning
physicist Marie-Curie, to the workers who kept French factories and
mines ticking over in the post-war years, to the delights of pizza,
couscous and sushi — it looks at how immigrants shaped French culture,
language and history.
Temporary exhibits planned for the coming months include a study of
Armenian refugees in the inter-war period and a series of portraits
of Ellis Island.
Although France has Europe’s largest immigrant population, and one
in four French people have at least one foreign grandparent, "their
story is hardly known and is not acknowledged," said the museum’s
co-president Jacques Toubon.
Several Socialist Party heavyweights attended the opening, including
Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe who lashed out at the government.
"This museum is about pulling together around a shared history and a
common future; the government’s policy is dividing France and feeding
the temptation of making foreigners our scape-goats," he charged.
"All the fears on the left and right concerning the ministry of
immigration and national identity have come true."
The government’s plans for DNA tests — a tool adopted in 12
other European countries — are part of a broader drive to tighten
immigration rules, restrict conditions of entry for foreigners and
step up the deportation of illegals.
Orders from the head of the paramilitary gendarmerie were revealed
Wednesday telling units to step up efforts to track down illegal
immigrants, warning too few were meeting their deportation targets.
Amara’s outburst against government policy sent a shockwave through
the ruling right-wing UMP party, with several voices in the party
and the opposition calling for her to resign.
But the cabinet closed ranks around Amara — a star member of the
government — with Prime Minister Francois Fillon telephoning Wednesday
to assure her of his "confidence in her work."