PARIS, July 25 (UPI) -- France plans to both grant residency to about 6,000 illegal immigrants as well as expel about twice that number.
The decision was announced by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy under his one-time legalization plan for families with children in French schools which will expire Aug. 14, reports the International Herald Tribune.
Government figures say there are about 4.5 million immigrants in France. The Interior Ministry estimates there are an additional 200,000 to 400,000 people who are in the country illegally.
Sarkozy is a leading candidate of the governing center-right party in next year's presidential elections.
"We have to be doing something right," Sarkozy told a news conference. "We're being criticized by the extreme right and the extreme left."
The latest move comes after months of debate over whether families of illegal immigrants with school-age children should be expelled or given amnesty, the report said.
Under the plan, families can qualify for amnesty if the parents had been in the country for at least two years and the children were either born in France or less than 13 years old when they arrived and had been in a French school since September 2005.
