He intends to challenge Emmanuel Macron on the grounds of immigration. This is the meaning of the appeal launched by Bernard Carayon on Sunday to all mayors of France. The latest presidential declarations, nor the first steps of Gabriel Attal’s new government, will be able to interrupt the national fight of Mayor LR of Lavaur (Tarn), launched against a distributional migration policy that he considers “irresponsible”, even “dangerous”. .
In this appeal, published on Bernard Carayon’s personal blog, social networks and the Republicans’ website, the local elected official begins by targeting the responsibility of the Head of State in a strategy that he believes is linked to the Games. Olympics. “The President of the Republic has decided to disperse tens of thousands of immigrants into rural areas, staying until now, irregularly or not, in the Paris region. To make, undoubtedly, Paris more ”presentable” and more controllable, six months before the Olympic Games… It’s unacceptable,” criticizes the president of the LR federation of Tarn.
Carayon has already won a battle against the State on Cathar land. It was in 2023 in Réalmont, where the prefect had considered the creation of a reception center for asylum seekers (Cada) planned for around fifty migrants, before having to back down in the face of local hostility. The right-wing elected official then hails the end of this project as a victory. “The agreement of the mayors is now required… Everyone will understand that no request for installation in Lavaur, expressed by the government representative, will be accepted,” he warns in a press release, before sending a letter to all mayors of his department entitled: “No to the installation of additional migrants in Tarn”.
In this letter, several subjects are in the crosshairs: the refurbishment of vacant housing, the status of “suspected refugees” before examination of their situation, the low number of expulsions for rejected people of this same status, the link between “mass immigration”, “delinquency” and “criminality”, the “75%” of French people opposed to this immigration, without forgetting a few questions on the consequences in the event of municipal refusal. “Will we be penalized financially by the State if we do not support this policy?” asks the former parliamentarian with concern. He also warns mayors of what he perceives as a political risk: “If in your municipality there is an increase in acts of delinquency or reactions, unfortunately, knee-jerk rejection of migrants, it is you and not the State that your fellow citizens will hold responsible for this situation.”
Some opponents will criticize him for not wanting to play the solidarity card at a critical moment, when the reality of migratory flows imposes itself as an emergency in the face of which many European leaders seem overwhelmed. “The State, which distrusts these subjects, is very poorly placed to impose such a distribution,” replies Carayon, “Emmanuel Macron does not know how to go about it and his majority does not allow him to deal with the subject. He is both schizophrenic and perverse when he rushes to refer the latest immigration text to the Constitutional Council after having invited his parliamentarians to vote on it.
More recently, on December 15, the regional councilor of Occitanie addressed 11 very direct questions to the new prefect of Tarn, Michel Vilbois. He questions the State representative on several subjects including, for example, the total number of immigrants expected in the department within the framework of the national ventilation policy, the financial weight of the housing and allowances planned, the number of files S or even the projects of “Salafist prayer rooms”… So many insights to which, he maintains, “every French citizen is entitled, especially the elected representatives of the Republic”.
In a new letter sent on January 8, Bernard Carayon goes back to the same prefect to express his surprise at still not having a response. Responses which, according to our information, had still not arrived in Lavaur on Sunday.
“It is not ‘essentializing’ foreigners to tell the truth about the figures. But it is by denying it that we maintain popular anger, even unbearable xenophobia,” insists the Tarnes elected official. In passing, he reminds the local public executive that the head of state himself establishes a link between immigration and delinquency. In the name of the “constitutional precautionary” principle, he also invites the public authority to further anticipate the “legal risks generated by its negligence”, like the plans for complaints recently considered by certain victims of the floods in Pas-de. -Calais. “Rural areas don’t want to live city life. When we choose Tarn, Aveyron or Cantal, it is not necessarily for historical or family reasons, but also out of a desire to experience something very different from the suburbs,” insists Bernard Carayon to Le Figaro.
