PARIS, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has announced more stringent controls on immigration following weeks of rioting in the country.
The new measures will make it more difficult to reunite immigrant families and to impose tighter selection rules on foreign students from outside the European Union, The Independent reported Wednesday.
However, leftist politicians and anti-racist campaigners questioned the move, saying of the 4,000 people arrested during the riots, only 120 were born outside France.
The government will also make it more difficult to win the right to come to France, or become French, by marrying a French citizen.
More than 200 public buildings and 10,000 cars were burned in rioting that erupted on Oct. 27 in impoverished suburbs inhabited largely by unemployed youth of African descent.
