France grants citizenship to 12,000 Covid frontline workers
axios.com
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They just took a bunch of essential workers who would have requested citizenship otherwise and lowered the legal stay requirement from 5 to 2 years for them.
To be part of a society is to work together, if you've shown to be willing to go the extra mile for your fellow citizens, it's a good sign of being a good society member.
Its easy for the French political elite to sign laws like this, but the social and economic burden of these decisions are borne by the lower classes.
Its much more likely that this is a decision to add an extra 12,000 Macron voters to the rolls.
Valuing people who put their lives on the line during a major healthcare crisis is the right thing to do.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S00148-017-0636-1
"Immigrants from Western countries have a positive fiscal impact, while immigrants from non-Western countries have a large negative one"
This has nothing to do with those people's culture or willingness to work or something like that. If a German immigrant had the same disadvantages, he would struggle just as much.
Furthermore, the point is moot anyways, because the economical value of a citizen goes beyond simply tax-payments minus benefits-received. These people are also customers that local businesses depend on, and any money spent on benefits will mostly directly flow back into the local economy.
Another important point is that these disadvantages disappear over the generations.
Another VERY important fact is that immigrants actually save us from the massive costs of an increasingly 'grey' society (due to low birth rate).
I'm not going to put every reason here how immigrants provide benefits. But I hope it's clear that there's a little bit more involved with determining economic impact than just tax minus benefits.
In some cities like Lyon, you can indeed wait 1+ year for the process.
Informally, the Administration / "Préfectures" are infamous for being slow, and requests are processed in each administrative division, so you'd rather not be in a city where there are a lot of applicants.
If you live in France, you are welcome to be in here, you can vote for local elections if you're from the EU, you pay taxes or not according to your income, like anyone else, you can access the full social security system and other public services,...
I understand that being French is a stateless concept about living in here and sharing the moment, and it's not just a legal status ; so it makes sense if it takes time, but it arrives eventually.
Now that they require test results, there’s an added cost, but one less thing to evaluate directly in the citizenship process, so maybe they’ll do away with the interview entirely.
They weren't made eligible for requesting it.
Basically, if you were injured in a battle fighting for France, you get expedited citizenship.
Interesting idea to extent it to frontline workers who risked their health during the pandemic.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Foreign_Legion#Composit...
It seems strange to me that more countries don't offer citizenship programmes like this.
There are plenty of those in Europe as well, in case you've missed the barrage of news about migrant crises, xenophobic naturalization policies, etc. Certainly, there are also countries like France that don't treat citizenship like some reward at the end of a pointlessly contrived maze, and these countries (IMO) deserve credit for that.
The West is often accused of "pillaging" the rest of the planet. Whether it is true or false, what is sure is that this cannot go together with key workers and vital forces, being sucked into western hospitals.
I fundamentally don't understand why people feel that they are entitled to a job in the US, that we somehow owe people from other nations a chance to immigrate, when we have entire swaths here in the country that have been effectively left behind by the economy (inner cities and rural america, especially Appalachia). Maybe we should focus more on training our existing citizens out of poverty and into skilled labor, rather than brain-draining the rest of the world.
What I can say objectively is that US docs are educated to be hyperspecialists. They do their thing, and their thing only and often have very narrow general medical knowledge. Europeans usually are more well-rounded, but that tends to backfire in smaller countries where there aren't enough cases to become truly expert.
This is an absurdly bold claim. How do you go from a personal experience to being in the position to make sweeping claims like this?
"Un an après son lancement, 16 381 dossiers ont été déposés en préfecture sur l’ensemble du territoire français et 12 012 étrangers sont devenus Français" from the first link in the article:
https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/actualites/communiques/marlene...
This cheapen our citizenship beyond stupidity, I did work during the pandemic and I am not expecting anyone to reward me for it, that’s what salary is for.
Becoming French should be rewarded to the people who lived here for a while, showed that there were able to speak fluent French, proved that they knew a good deal of French history, literature as well as decent general knowledge and who embraced the culture.
I am not surprised France is not France anymore. It’s not a country with shared ideals, it’s just a bunch of people living in the same area.
However, in exceptional circumstances, serving the country, even if by chance, warrant a bit of leeway. Our citizenship is not a "valuable" resource we must keep to ourselves, it's an admission we like each other.
France has always been a bunch of people living in the same area. Go to Marseille and tell me they share your ideas, if you're from Normandy. If feel more at home in China than there :D
This.
Saying "France is not France anymore" is a typical MAGA (or FFGE) move. You have your own idea of what the country is, based on your narrow experience of it, and you see it moving from this view, so you think that the whole country is not the same anymore. But every country changes, the World changes. So no matter when you are or where you are, a country is always "not the same anymore". And if you liked what it was sometimes and don't like what it currently is, yeah, maybe it was "better" before. But some other people find it better now. And other even thought it was better at a time before you found it great.
So saying a country is not as good as it was is just being an old man yelling at clouds.
As a French, I'm more ashamed by your comment than by anything these people might do. It's going to be hard to cheapen "our" citizenship given how low French born people have dragged it.
> I am not surprised France is not France anymore. It’s not a country with shared ideals, it’s just a bunch of people living in the same area.
Despite what the far right like to pretend, France never was a country of shared ideals. France history is one of continuous struggles and disagreements. It starts with war in the Vendée, through Thiers having the communards executed, the pro and anti-Dreyfusard to Petain having the communist members of parliament expelled. It's even more fun when you consider that most of the people who fought for France in its darkest hour did so from a frankly internationalist ideal.
The defining factor of France if there ever was one is its strong and highly centralised state and its undying love for meddling with the lives of its citizen and private companies. France is first and foremost a state more than a nation. You could argue that the French nation is actually defined by adherence to the Jacobin ideal of the state.
I really wish people stopped believing the tosh the state cronies served to peasants and labourers at the beginning of the 20th century to convince them to go die in a trench.
How do you assume that it will have any impact on the elections ?
I doubt that 12k people will change the outcome. I doubt they will all vote. Even more for Macron.
Far right people who tend to agreed with Macron's ideas will find this problematic to say the least. So know they will look for alternatives.
Moderate people don't exist or don't vote.
It will not change the mind of left people. Or they will see it as a move so they will hate Macron even more.
So I don't see what positive outcome for his reelection he could be expecting from this "move".
Will we take care of the people who took care of us?
In a way I think it's good they have these requirements in place as that means people in Brazil won't be without doctors but its also pretty awful for me to say something like this given I DID move here to work, so I guess anyone else should have the same shot.
Some medical professionals find the US healthcare system to be unconscionable. Some would move, some wouldn't. My doctor parents were offered jobs in the US but they refused on moral grounds - forgoing a somewhat higher salary - preferring to stay in Canada.
The best outcome would be for them to move to the US, push down salaries (salaries in the US are something like 56% of all of healthcare spending) and that normalization would then stem the flow of foreign professionals while seriously benefitting Americans.
https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/career-planning/study-and-t...
and it seems that basically you can get a student loan for this for the first four years of your degree, then you might be eligible for a means tested bursary afterwards and a non means-tested £1000 grant. This scarcely counts as paying for medical training, in my opinion.
That's why doctors trained in the US typically graduate with around $240,000 in debt, while doctors trained in the UK owe a fraction of that.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-100-000-green-cards-at-ris...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...
But for the 140k employment based GCs, it depends on the company hiring the individual based on a skillset/qualification and sponsoring them for permanent residency. Google doesn't differentiate between an engineer from Argentina and an engineer from India (arbitrary example). Why should one get a greencard within a year and the other have to wait 10+ years?
John oliver did a piece on it last year
Would you mind going into detail on why you think that? To me, it's not obvious.
I was addressing the concern of the PP who mentioned immigration being dominated by a few populous countries in absence of country caps. Ideally the immigration system should be revamped bottom up to include a point based system which gives points to educational qualifications as well as familial ties.
The current political climate leaves that option out of the window. Hence at least removing country caps from employment based immigration (which is 14% of the total annual quota) is a reasonable common sense fix.
Why is this bad?
Ok?
What’s your problem with that?
The problem is that the number of green cards is relatively fixed, so there has to be some way to distribute them that prevents two nations from taking almost all the spots.
But why?
Why is it so important to you what countries people are coming from?
The responsibility of an immigration program to its citizens isn't necessarily to maximize diversity. It's to maximize the benefit to the country. A points-based immigration program would allow the country to optimize along any number of axes: under-represented minorities, skills, etc.
> The problem is that the number of green cards is relatively fixed, so there has to be some way to distribute them that prevents two nations from taking almost all the spots.
Is it? Canada brings in 3x as many immigrants per capita as the US does. It's brought in 1% of its population each year for roughly the last 100 years - so the equivalent of 3-4M green cards per year. I think there's probably a lot of wiggle room.
That's what the cap is for.
> Canada brings in 3x as many immigrants per capita as the US does. It's brought in 1% of its population each year for roughly the last 100 years - so the equivalent of 3-4M green cards per year.
Almost every week there's a thread with Canadian Engineers whining about low pay. How are these out of control immigration quotas helping them out?
Yes, but it selects for the wrong things. It's an axe when you need a scalpel.
> Almost every week there's a thread with Canadian Engineers whining about low pay. How are these out of control immigration quotas helping them out?
What on earth do you mean "out of control" lol. That's a value judgement you made that you're projecting.
Canada has low inequality. Most people are paid roughly the same amount - in line with much of Western Europe. The US is closer to PNG, the Philippines, Turkey and Madagascar. You can't have low inequality and high pay for one group. [1] Canadians value that. You don't, and that's ok too.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
You also can't have overachievers. This becomes obvious when looking at academia. [0]
These individuals are the ones bootstrapping entire businesses and economic sectors.
[edit] did you not have overachievers in high school and college? I suspect they weren't getting paid! Quite the opposite.
I said that the wealth inequality was lower, and inequality being lower by definition requires that pay bands are compressed.
Keep in mind that when you compare against international salaries, you have to convert not just to a neutral currency, but also adjust for PPP. Canada's PPP adjustment factor is close to +15%. That is to say, 1 USD goes 15% further in Canada than it does in America.
There are pros and cons to a more egalitarian society. Certain groups that would do better in other countries do worse, and in exchange certain groups that would do worse in other countries do better.
Per Levels.fyi a:
- Shopify L7 makes $324K USD ($372K PPP).
- That's a Google L5 at $356K.
- A Facebook E5 at $390K.
- Or a Microsoft level 65 at $287K.
Remote changes the game a bit here, but in the past your Shopify L7 would have gone infinitely further in Ottawa than your Facebook E5 would have gone down in MPK. Local PPP matters too.
Having worked in both countries, $300k USD goes way further in the US than $300k CAD in Canada. And that's even accounting for the housing difference.
Yes, taxes are very comparable in California and New York on this income level. 400,000 CAD in Ontario is taxed at a net effective 44.8%. In BC 43.8%
In California you'd be taxed at an effective 42%. In New York you'd be taxed at an effective 43.2%. And after the Biden tax hikes go into effect this starts to look a lot worse.
Not to mention the Canadian tax bill includes healthcare whereas the US salary is reduced by $12,000 a year to account for it.
> HST? Gasoline? The general higher cost of anything imported?
You're making $400K a year and you think that a $55 average monthly gas bill is going to make a difference?
Yes this is all factored into the PPP adjustment. [1]
> How about the recent run up in housing costs?
It happened in both countries.
> Having worked in both countries, $300k USD goes way further in the US than $300k CAD in Canada.
I suspect this isn't true.
Now you can cherry-pick non-tech cities in the US, but I can do that with Canada too, and of course, the vast majority of tech folks have historically chosen to live in NY and CA for a reason. Will that hold? Who knows!
[1] https://www.oecd.org/sdd/prices-ppp/purchasingpowerparities-...
In the US, RSU vesting is considered ordinary income and taxed accordingly, this was considered and included.
[edit] I believe in Canada, RSU vesting is also ordinary income, but if not then treating them as a capital gain will substantially reduce the tax burden for Canadians.
One of them is a stable reserve currency. Goods are priced in USD then the exchange rate is used to get the final price in other currencies.
Most people buy goods at home.
Relative strength and weakness of a particular currency against another just indicates whether imports are more economical or whether manufacturing at home + exporting are more economical.
This change over time is reflected in both exchange rates and accounted for in PPP adjustment. It may fluctuate over time, but I don't think that's a huge deal when deciding which country you plan to work in.
Check out DXY. You'll see that as compared to a basket of other world currencies the USD has ranged substantially, from 0.76 in 2012 to as high as 1.02 in 2016. [1]
Being the reserve currency more often than not means that its a unit of account.
Why do you think India and China aren't diverse by themselves, and within themselves? India probably has more languages than all of Europe. Would it be sensible to treat Europe (or even just the Schengen area) as one country, to "increase diversity"? I think that would be dumb. European countries are obviously very diverse and we see that more clearly because they're sovereign nations on a map. India and China are mega-countries and we fail to appreciate the diversity within.
> Basically no one from small nations would get a green card
Why would that happen? It would be a first-come-first-served system. If a person from a small nation applies, they'll get it at the same time as someone from a bigger nation who applied at the same time as them (modulo processing time variances).
Why would it? Europe isn't a country. India and China are countries. I fail to see your point. It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans etc have a more or less equal chance, and that's what the current rules are supposed to provide.
> It would be a first-come-first-served system
So you think immigration status should be determined by whether someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not? I'm not sure that's entirely practical or fair. Perhaps a lottery would be more suitable.
The point was in the rest of my comment. "Country" doesn't imply a homogenous, non-diverse group of people. And "diversity" is the purported reason for country-of-birth caps.
> It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans
You said China and India are countries, then went on to compare them to continents. Surely you see the fallacy here.
> someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not?
I didn't say anything about the 1st of January (or any other date). "First-come-first-served" means applications are treated on their merits and processed in the order they arrived. If two people with the same application, but different country of birth, apply at the same time, they should have roughly same result in the same amount of time. That's not the case today. And I'm struggling to understand how a single queue is "unfair".
The reason for caps is historical. The idea was to reduce any ethnic group from wielding too strong an influence on politics by immigrating in large numbers, but that is now moot because of mostly uncontrolled/lenient immigration from Latin America over decades.
The main problem with the US immigration system is the high prevalence of family immigration vs. employment-based immigration. The majority of professional immigrants, such as the doctors who serve rural areas, medical/pharma researchers, postgrads in various scientific disciplines and software and high-tech industry employees are drawn from the latter category, and the majority face insanely long wait periods. This is rapidly eroding the attractiveness of the US as a destination for these people, which can only harm the future prospects of the country.
Who cares if India and China become the majority of immigrations? What difference does it make?
What the US needs is top-down immigration reform and a points-based program like Canada and Australia. Those countries get to cherry-pick the most skilled immigrants and the most likely to thrive in their new homes.
Who cares where they were born?! That's literally the least interesting thing about an immigration petition.
As the current system is being abused by Indian consulting companies plahying the numbers games and filing for as many people as possibly to place them at low(er) income roles
https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr...
Right. Trump tried proposing a merit-based immigration system while he was in office. It quickly got shouted down and fell off the radar, by people and factions who didn't want to consider that different people have varying levels of merit to offer society.
The other challenge for America is that it gets drastically more applications than Canada does (not to mention that IIRC Canada does have a bottleneck). I think putting region restrictions/incentives for immigration might be better, so that you give preference to residency outside of already populated areas/less populated states.
If you want to make it attractive to live in some region, just create good jobs there and people will follow. Trying to force immigrants to live there if there are no good jobs sounds like a terrible bandaid.
I'll preface this by saying that this my anecdotal understanding of the Canadian immigration process. Essentially provinces can nominate the immigration of certain desirable professionals, boosting their cases to the top of the queue for an immigrant visa. It comes with a requirement to live and work in the sponsoring province for a minimum period of time - something like 3 years. Immigrants are also eligible to apply for citizenship after 3 years of residency, and citizens have the right to live and work anywhere. From my understanding of the provincial nominee system is that they strongly prefer that you have an existing social and family network within the province, encouraging you to stay put even after you become a citizen.
Secondly, you know how you fill out taxes every year & you have to say where your primary residence was for tax purposes? That's how you enforce it.
My understanding is that there's one province (Quebec) that select it's own immigrants (quotas are per province).
They can't force anyone to stay so they tune their selection algorithm to match profiles that are most likely to stay.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
You could ask for proof of purchase from local stores, check the address of the employer to see if the employer is located in that area. Check train/bus tickets.
> if there are no good jobs sounds like a terrible bandaid.
It depends, maybe you need workforce in some occupations in that area, so you tell immigrants who have expertise in that domain to stay in that area and fi you spend X years you will get the citizenship after that you are free to move in the country.
Its a fair deal, if the immigrant does not like he/she just wont come.
It's to avoid people using passports of convenience to game the system.
> He's been in the India backlog for a decade.
Truth is, a lot of that backlog is self-imposed. H1B are supposed to be for real employment for a specialty occupation. There are "Body Shops", mostly Indian owned, that will submit fraudulent applications to import cheap underqualified labor in the country. [0] [1]
If the people working at these body shops or their owners simply decided to start following the law, this would clear the backlog almost instantly.
> What the US needs is top-down immigration reform and a points-based program like Canada and Australia. Those countries get to cherry-pick the most skilled immigrants and the most likely to thrive in their new homes.
And yet how does it explains the brain drain these two countries have towards... the US!
[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...
[1] https://cis.org/North/Indian-Body-Shop-Indicted-Abuse-H1B-Pr...
Yes I'm sure people looking to immigrate to the US are checks notes becoming British Citizens. A country with notoriously difficult immigration requirements. Citizenship requires 5+ years in most instances to obtain (with a few small exceptions). Generally speaking all first-world countries have stringent rules.
> Truth is, a lot of that backlog is self-imposed. H1B are supposed to be for real employment for a specialty occupation.
I'm not sure that's what self-imposed means.
> And yet how does it explains the brain drain these two countries have towards... the US!
Immigration to the US is effectively suspended. [0] These days those folks are going to Canada. [1]
'"While the States has gone, 'Let's make it difficult to get the employees here on a visa,' Canada's gone the exact opposite, and it's beneficial for Canada," says Alex Norman, the other co-founder of TechToronto. "You had a fast-growing ecosystem here that's been getting a shot of steroids."'
That's what it looks like when you hang a "NO VACANCIES" sign in the window.
[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/s...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/27/799402801/canada-wins-u-s-los...
First world might, other countries don't. So it would be easy to get citizenship from one of those and then use it to bypass the cap.
> I'm not sure that's what self-imposed means.
Indian nationals applying for fraudulent visas.
> and it's beneficial for Canada
Is it really? How's the VC ecosystem? Unicorns? Not long ago the government bragged to investors that Canadians devs were worth 50K less than their American counterparts. [0]
[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4178326/amazon-vancouver-tech-wor...
In this case I was saying that quotas and caps would still apply but be basted on citizenship instead of place of birth. If everyone started buying Cayman Islands citizenship instead, the quota would fill up fast.
> Indian nationals applying for fraudulent visas.
Again, that's not self-imposed.
> Is it really? How's the VC ecosystem? Unicorns? Not long ago the government bragged to investors that Canadians devs were worth 50K less than their American counterparts. [0]
This is a new phenomenon, and it takes time to turn a boat. I think it would be pretty myopic not to see the trend, however. The ecosystem will follow in time.
[edit] I think Shopify was the defining moment when things started to turn. If an Ottawa startup can reach a $200B market cap in a few years, that's going to create a lot of wealth, spawn its own startups and an investment ecosystem in its own right.
> Why shouldn’t we have per country caps?
So, I'll give it a shot.
Let's say that 1% of the human population happens to have great genius. They're the cream of the crop in terms of ability, though perhaps they lack opportunity.
Statistically, where are most of them going to be born? In the most populous countries of course...
If you choose a flat-rate cutoff for importing talent on a per-country basis, you're choosing "diversity" (of birthplace...which might not mean anything at all) over "talent". Which would be fine, except that this particular route to residency was ostensibly created to bring in talent specifically.
Although, immigration is a highly politicized issue and practicality usually has little to no bearing on the policy in this area. It appears many other issues in America are heading that way...
You asked a question, I tried to provide an answer to it which is reflective of the common viewpoint.
It’s a good thing.
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210916-france-suspen...
He supposedly began working as a firefighter afterwards, which France set up for him, and has since become a citizen.
What's the issue with that?
You don't get to show up and become a citizen just for the sake of existing.
I understand that the current system doesn't work this way, but I also think that the current system is broken and unsustainable.
Rewarding exceptional or deserving people does not mean that those not rewarded have been treated unjustly. That is a perversion of egalitarianism.
Yet there are hundreds of thousands of other illegal immigrants beyond these 12,001 who maybe are not exceptional heroes but who still as a basic civil right deserve a citizenship which France denies.
Specifically how attitudes changed towards people who crossed borders to help out when the blip was undone.
Indeed, was there really any pressing need to reduce the residence requirement from 5 to 2 years for garbage collectors?
To be meaningful this sort of programme should focus on people who have gone significantly above and beyond otherwise it just dilutes the act of getting citizenship. For instance legionnaires wounded in battle can apply for citizenship... Clearly not the same at all.
Let's not forget that next year is a major electoral year with both Presidential and general elections.
The dilution of the meaning of citizenship is a massive tragedy.
If you consider that the person collecting your garbage during a pandemic getting the same rights as you have by being born in the right side of the globe is a dilution of the meaning of citizenship I really don't know how to explain this to you any better.
Why does it need to be such a huge deal, and why is it's difficulty to attain (unless you accidentally got born there) such an important aspect of it?
My country is NOT my family. My "nation" (whatever that is... a replacement for a tribe or something?) is NOT my family, nor even my extended clan. Why do I need to have "family" at a scale of millions of people, almost all of whom I will never encounter?
A reminder of the still unanswered questions:
Why does citizenship matter?
What does any of that have to do with the difficulty of changing citizenship?
Basically, you become a lazy local lol
If the requirements are too low then national identity no longer means anything.
There can of course be exceptions but an exception should require something exceptional.
> garbage collectors that worked straight through the entire pandemic
Same as everyone else. The pandemic has not changed their job. Compare this with front line health workers in overcrowded ICUs who had to face "war-like" conditions for months.
Also, I'd like to point out that of lot of commenters are from the US: as a French citizen, I very much believe that, for obvious historical and cultural reasons, our conception of the citizenship (nationality) very much differ.
That's not something that should be handed out lightly. That said, the current at least partially time-based requirements for naturalization in most countries probably aren't exactly perfect.
The question is: How would one approach such an individually impactful decision differently and more effectively? Immigration authorities often already are unable to adequately cope with applications for naturalization as is.
Further complicating matters by individually assessing if someone is likely to stay in a country probably isn't particularly helpful in that regard without a wholesale overhaul of the bureaucracy involved.
Having the right citizenship also means you can command higher salaries for the exact same job. Some authors have called this citizenship premium or citizenship rent.
To me all these seem like valid arguments against gatekeeping rather than for. In a way passports serve a similar role to what hereditary titles were until the 18th-19th century in much of the Western world, and what you're saying sounds a lot like the debates people had on newly minted barons not deserving the privileges of old blood...
And I think we highly over estimate the value of citizenships, after all they can be literally bought in some places.
Indeed, and that should not be diluted by lowering the bar to "has been showing up for work for two years", which is pretty much as low as can be and, frankly, an insult to those who got it by spilled blood or outstanding service.
I'm not against this program but, since it is done in relation to the pandemic, it should have been restricted to those who did exceptional things to help during that time , garbage collectors clearly haven't even if their role is essential.
I'd like to see data to back your claim that it is hard to recruit for that job in France. I'm far from convinced and in fact in some French cities it is a very coveted job because it is well paid taking into account the low number of hours (famously source of a long conflict in Marseille where they are paid 35h per week but usually work 15h and go on strike when attempts are made to increase number of hours actually worked...)
If these people stop showing up for a month, you'll find out just how essential these people are. If it is hard to find people to do this domestically, then offering citizenship to attract foreign workers is a good idea.
Again, I'm not opposed to granting citizenship outside of the normal procedure, but I think this should require having done some exceptional to deserve it. I have no problem with granting it to a law-abiding health worker who has pulled 60 hour weeks in ICU since the beginning of the pandemic, but I don't see what a garbage collector who's been doing their job normally (like everyone else) has done to deserve "a medal".
Lastly, France has a high unemployment rate so I don't think there is a need to attract unskilled foreign workers. If unskilled jobs are left unfilled (and I don't have data to say they are) the issue is not workforce shortages.
So if there is a calculation, it's to do it well in advance of the campaign, so as not to have to justify themselves.
Marcon is appealing to the centre and left because I think he'd be quite happy to have another second round between him and Le Pen. It'd be closer than last time but he'd win. So ideally the best things he can do are things that make more people on the left vote for him and keep Le Pen on top on the right. This might be one of them.
I also think Macron launched his campaign with his visit to Marseille, which also looked very much like an appeal to the centre and left.
[1] https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Immigration-is-a...
What I'm suggesting is that high unemployment is a sign that there are people available locally. If there are difficulties filling jobs, especially unskilled jobs, this therefore points towards problems within the employment market and benefits (which are indeed well-known for having systemic problems in France for a very long time) not 'shortages' per se. In such situation the claim that immigration is 'needed' to fill these jobs does not hold water.
Judging by piles of garbage decorating biggest cities of Western Europe every few months, yes.
A question once asked here was which two species of animals are kept together in the local zoo. Another person was denied by their town (until appealing to a higher court) because they were involved in some animal rights activism, which the people in her town/community disagreed with.
The point of gate-keeping citizenship for immigrants has been explained ad nauseam in this discussion alone and is, frankly common sense expect for the most extreme on the political spectrum.