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Photo credits : PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP
Tribune. We, the staff of the national Education in Seine-Saint-Denis, are committed·e·s in a single goal : to help our students to progress, and to define their research project and to carry it out. This is not an easy task as the barriers that stand in front of the young people of our department are numerous. This year in particular, they have shown great self-denial to continue to work and, in terminal, to prepare for higher education or employability.
But a part of our efforts to assist them in their journey is to be reduced to nil, in respect of some of them. Not for reasons of level or motivation, but simply because the prefecture refuses to do the paperwork and puts a stop brutal, unfair, unbearable, to their path of success.
These students of foreign nationality, arrived in France for several years, alone or with their family. They have accomplished a part of their education and like any other student, are full members of the school community. However, on the day of their 18 years, they have become young adults and can now, under the current act, be expelled at any time from the French territory if they have not committed the regularization of their situation.
However, this regularization is, in practice, become impossible within our department, which, de facto, puts them in a situation of illegality anxiety-provoking. How to study with the fear of be stopped on the way to the high school as it happened this year to one of our students ? Since two years now, the préfecture of the Seine-Saint-Denis has imposed appointments, and dematerialized to the whole process of obtaining a residence permit. And for the past two years, the site is constantly saturated : unable to get an appointment to see his situation under consideration. Some have started their efforts there are more than a year, without any response from the prefecture.
The silence of the administration
These students are hindered in the regularization of their situation and their future prospects with the worst of answers : the silence of the administration. In Seine-Saint-Denis, they are several hundreds, probably thousands, to be blocked in their path, and forced into illegality by an administration that is blind. We have more cases of students training had opened their door, but will have to give it up, because he was unable to obtain the regularization of their administrative situation.
We refuse to see them suffer this injustice without reacting to it. We did not want these thousands of high school students, soon to be graduates and future professionals, who may have gone through trials that none of us cannot imagine, to be purely and simply deprived of their right to pursue their education – a right enshrined in our history and our Constitution.
We, the staff of the national Education in Seine-Saint-Denis, do not accept that a single one of these teenagers be forced to put an abrupt end to her education because the prefecture does not receive it in time. We require all young adults to be able to get an appointment at the prefecture before the new school year in September, in order to obtain the residence permits necessary for the continuation of their life in France, and to their social and professional integration.
Beyond the emergency situation, we ask that the school becomes for all of our students without papers a shrine that pulled out momentarily to the trials they have been able to live. We, the staff of the national Education in Seine-Saint-Denis, therefore, ask that the principle of a right to study them to be recognized and they should be given the possibility of a future.
First signatories : Aurélie Despériez, professor, librarian, high school Arthur Rimbaud, La Courneuve, William Hoibian, teacher of history and geography, lycée general Flora-Tristan, Noisy-Le-Grand, Julie Mandelbaum, teacher of French, history, professional high school Jean-Moulin, Rosny-Sous-Bois, Alice Mauricette, a teacher of Spanish, lycée polyvalent Auguste Blanqui, Saint-Ouen, Emma Scholler, senior advisor, education, school, general and vocational, of the building, Claude-Nicolas-Ledoux, Pavilions-Sous-Bois, Cecile Veillard, a teacher of philosophy, lycée polyvalent Auguste Blanqui, Saint-Ouen, Emmanuel Zemmour, teacher of social and economic sciences, high school, general and vocational, of the building, Claude-Nicolas-Ledoux, pavillon-Sous-Bois… The list of the other signatories is available here. 776 personal of National Education operating in 94 schools and colleges of Seine Saint Denis.
The signatory organizations : the FSU 93, the CGT Educ’action 93, United 93, the Snes 93, the Snep 93, the UNL, the Cimade Ile-de-France, LDH 93, the GFEN, Asti 93, ADJIE, Asmie, the Francas, 93, the Federation of social Centres 93, Mrap 93, the League of education of the 93.
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