France to immigrants: go home.

• Author: Glazer, Lisa

From Sweden to Portugal to Austria, doors are slamming shut. As the recession worsens in Western Europe and unemployment climbs to 12 per cent, attitudes toward immigration - and the laws governing it - are changing dramatically.

Germany no longer promises asylum to "people persecuted on political grounds." Greece recently expelled more than 25,000 Albanians. The number of racial incidents in Britain nearly doubled in just four years. And France, once a relatively welcoming new home, now offers a vivid example of the harsh new approach to immigration.

The view from a park bench in the Belleville gardens is classic Paris: charming rooftops, church spires, the coquettish peak of the Eiffel Tower. But even this world-renowned panorama won't persuade Chechene Coulibaly of the beauties of France. After seven years - and numerous short stays in prison because he doesn't have working papers - the twenty-two-year-old native of Mali is ready to give up life as an illegal immigrant and return to his poverty-stricken village.

"The police ask for our papers every day - on the street, on the Metro, right here in the gardens," he says, lowering his voice as a gendarme passes by the pansies and begonias in full bloom. "My family is very poor. I wanted to get money to help them buy food - that's the only reason I came here. I never stole, I never sold drugs, but they ask for my papers every day and now I want to leave France."

If the new conservative-dominated government of France has its way, a package of tough new immigration laws may prod other foreigners here to make the same decision as Coulibaly. The laws, which were passed earlier this year, tighten the screws on legal and illegal immigrants by restricting access to citizenship, allowing the police to make random identity checks, and speeding up deportations.

While a few of the laws were recently declared unconstitutional, the general trend is clear: France is no longer a haven for foreigners.

The laws are the fulfillment of the conservatives' campaign promises last spring to crack down on clandestine immigrants. The most vocal proponent is Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, the pit bull of a politician who oversees the police.

"The goal we have set, given the seriousness of the situation," he told the daily newspaper Le Monde, "is to tend toward zero immigration."

With a grim recession kicking in, the new measures appear to have general support from the French public: Many are quick to make a...