Sarkozy ally defends new French immigration post

PARIS, May 21 (Reuters) France's immigration and national identity minister promised a humane approach to his duties today, but historians and rights groups said the new portfolio was shameful and risked fanning xenophobia.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, a law and order hardliner, campaigned strongly on the theme of national identity during his election campaign and promoted loyal ally Brice Hortefeux to head the controversial ministry.

The new ministry will group responsibilities for all aspects of immigration, the integration of new arrivals as well as ties with developing countries. It will also promote selective immigration that favours qualified workers.

''My policies will be dictated by firmness and humanity at the same time,'' Hortefeux told Europe 1 radio on Monday, saying he would not be driven by dogmatism.

Some 25,000 illegal immigrants would be expelled in 2007, Hortefeux said, estimating that between 200,000 and 400,000 foreigners without residency papers lived in the country.

''Their number has started to fall,'' he said.

Immigration is a sensitive issue in France. A survey conducted ahead of Sarkozy's election on May 6 showed most French people backed his ministry idea.

But during two stints as interior minister in the past five years, Sarkozy triggered large protests when he tightened immigration laws and ordered the expulsion of thousands of illegal immigrants during two stints as interior minister over the last five years.

The MRAP anti-racism group called the new ministry a ''ministry of shame''.

RESIGNATIONS A group of prominent historians raised the pressure on Friday when they resigned from a national history institute over the ministry's creation, saying linking immigration questions with national identity risked reinforcing racial prejudice.

''Historically, this association is made by forces of the right or extreme right in periods of crisis, to stigmatise certain immigrants,'' one of the historians, Patrick Weil, said.

''It creates polarisation. It justifies racist and xenophobic prejudices because the government, the president ... seem to adopt them. It's very serious,'' he told Reuters.

Many youths in France's ethnically diverse suburbs said Sarkozy's hardline law and order comments fuelled tensions in the poor neighbourhoods which erupted in riots in 2005.

Weil and seven colleagues resigned from the CNHI National centre on the history of immigration, an institute aimed at explaining how immigrants have helped develop French society.

''If the president creates this ministry ... our institutional role becomes absurd because the ministry itself destroys the educational work we want to do,'' Weil said.

Mrap said the new ministry highlighted nationalist policy.

''It constitutes an unacceptable attack on the values of fraternity and equality,'' the group said in a statement. ''Such a measure resorts to the continued policy of chasing immigrants.'' REUTERS SKB HS1829