Associations: Amoureux au ban public, National Association of Communist and Republican Elected Officials (ANECR), Association for the Recognition of the Rights of Homosexual and Transsexual Persons to Immigration and Stay (ARDHIS), ATTAC, Lawyers for the Defense of Foreigners' Rights, This France Association, CIMADE, Medical Committee for Exiles (COMEDE), Representative Council of Black Associations (CRAN), Information and Support Group for Immigrants (GISTI), La Bande Passante (LBP), Human Rights League (LDH), Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples (MRAP), Education Without Borders Network (RESF), SOS Racism, Vigilance Committee on the Uses of History (CVUH), Welcome and Solidarity Group (GAS)

Unions: Sud Education, Solidaires Union, Unitary Trade Union Federation (FSU), SNES-FSU, National Union CGT-Educ'action, Federation of Education, Research and Culture CGT (FERC-CGT)

Parties: Democratic Movement (MoDem), New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), Communist Party (PC), Left Party (PG), Radical Left Party (PRG), Socialist Party (PS), Greens

MODEM (Jean-Luc Bennahmias)
For the abolition of the Ministry on National Identity and Immigration.
Since the creation of the Ministry on National Identity and Immigration, it is the first time we are invited to speak on the issue. I therefore demand its abolition.
We all have multiple identities: European, national, regional, cultural, religious...
With the creation of this Ministry, the French government opposes this idea. It clings to the impossible definition of a singular national identity. This Ministry has no reason to exist on this issue. It reminds me of some dark pages of the country's history.
"Country of Human Rights"? "Country of Enlightenment"? The situation is very bleak: quotas for the expulsion of foreigners revised upwards, raids on undocumented immigrants, expulsion of exiles to countries at war in disregard of the Geneva Convention...
It is essential to return to a humanistic management of the right of asylum, issues that have absolutely nothing to do with national identity.

NPA
Let's abolish the Ministry of National Identity and Immigration.
The NPA supports the call "We demand the abolition of the Ministry of National Identity and Immigration".
We share the analysis of the initiators regarding the very nature of this ministry which "has introduced in our country a risk of identity confinement and exclusion whose profound gravity is measured every day for two and a half years. Very officially, words have been introduced on the public scene, which designate and stigmatize the foreigner – and by extension, anyone who looks foreign".
This ministry is the ministry of hunting immigrants and racism, as evidenced by the 27,000 expulsions per year or the latest statements by Nadine Morano, once again stigmatizing Islam, young people from the suburbs. The great debate on national identity opens the door to all racism and nationalism. It has only one goal: "divide and conquer", make immigrants, Muslims scapegoats while the government and employers make all workers, French and immigrants, pay for the crisis. This ministry institutionalizes a toxic hierarchy, not even defined by French nationality, between a hypothetical "us", the native French, according to Besson's expression, and a contemptuous "them", foreigners, immigrants and their descendants. We must oppose this policy.
The NPA therefore calls for the broadest possible gathering of residents, associations, parties... to demand "the abolition of this Ministry of National Identity and Immigration". This fight will be one of the main issues of the struggles in 2010.

PC
After the latest atrocities on Afghans returned to their war-torn country, the government lets loose! It is an act of cruelty for these men who have traveled all the way to Europe to find some peace and dignity. Instead, they are not only expelled to their war-torn country but are also called cowards because they do not fight. It's despicable! The PCF demands the abolition of Eric Besson's ministry and strongly condemns the statements made by government members.
Marie-George Buffet, Deputy and National Secretary of the PCF and Pierre Laurent, National Coordinator of the PCF have signed the petition demanding the abolition of the Ministry of National Identity and Immigration.

PG
The deputies of the Left Party for the abolition of the Ministry of National Identity and Immigration.
Martine BILLARD, Jacques DESSALANGRE, Marc DOLEZ deputies of the Left Party
The deputies of the Left Party reaffirm their desire to abolish the Ministry of National Identity and Immigration which shames the French Republic, following the call launched by twenty researchers against what it calls the "nationalist hijacking of the idea of nation".
Indeed, the very idea of fossilizing a "national identity" by a ministry, and now by a debate imposed by the President of the Republic, is particularly dangerous and nauseating. What does it mean to be French, if not to have an identity card of the French Republic? Who can be authorized to dictate what makes, for each, their collective identity or collective identities, whether political, social or cultural?
The emphasis on the theme of national identity, since the creation of this ministry in 2007, has only produced identity confinement and exclusion by designating and stigmatizing as foreign to the "national us" people who rightly feel French. As for immigration policy, it results in inhumane harassment against undocumented immigrants, placing children and their parents in detention centers in disregard of the international convention on the rights of the child.
It is urgent to end this ministry of shame.

PS
Communiqué of the Socialist Party (January 7, 2010)
The Socialist Party supports the call of the Collective for the abolition of the Ministry of National Identity.
The Socialist Party supports the call launched on December 4 by twenty researchers for the abolition of the Ministry of National Identity.
The creation of this ministry is based on an approach that confines national identity to criteria of belonging and therefore exclusion.
The debate hastily launched and staged by the government to try to forget its failures only amplifies the risk of identity confinement towards which the right and Nicolas Sarkozy are leading us.
True to its history, the Socialist Party shares the desire of the initiators of this call to "reaffirm the universalist ideals that are the foundation of our Republic".
Sandrine Mazetier, National Secretary for Immigration, will participate, on behalf of the Socialist Party, in the Press Conference organized by the Collective on Monday, January 11, 2010, at 11 a.m. at the National Assembly.

GREENS (Cécile Duflot)
"Since Nicolas Sarkozy promised its creation during the 2007 presidential campaign, the Ministry of Immigration and National Identity has had only one vocation: to retain the National Front electorate, by diverting public attention, whenever the need arises, to migrants. Under the pretext of fighting xenophobia, this policy only fuels it.
Dangerous in normal times, this vocation is even more serious with the economic crisis: because if Nicolas Sarkozy hastened to promise a moralization of capitalism and the imminent return of job-creating growth, his inability to keep such promises left him with only one option: to increase the exaltation of national identity based on the stigmatization of immigration. The ecological crisis proves to us every day that it is not by raising borders and barriers that we will be able to respond to the magnitude of the challenges of the 21st century.
Therefore, to thwart this deleterious theme that distracts public opinion from a necessary response to the global crisis we are going through, there is no other solution than the abolition of the institution that organizes such drifts, namely the Ministry of Immigration and National Identity. The Greens are committed to never participating in a majority that would make room for such a ministry".