@ISIDEWITHNewsDaily DiscussionFrancePoliceHousingOlympicsOlympic GamesEmmanuelLyon•••2yrs ago

France Is Busing Homeless Immigrants Out of Paris Before the Olympics

The French government has put thousands of homeless immigrants on buses and sent them out of Paris ahead of the Olympics.

The immigrants said they were promised housing elsewhere, only to end up living on unfamiliar streets far from home or flagged for deportation.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has promised that the Olympic Games will showcase the country’s grandeur. But the Olympic Village was built in one of Paris’s poorest suburbs, where thousands of people live in street encampments, shelters or abandoned buildings.

Around the city over the past year, the police and courts have evicted roughly 5,000 people, most of them single men, according to Christophe Noël du Payrat, a senior government official in Paris. City officials encourage them to board buses to cities like Lyon or Marseille.

“We were expelled because of the Olympic Games,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, from Chad, who was evicted from an abandoned cement factory near the Olympic Village. He moved to a vacant building south of Paris, from which the police evicted residents in April.

A bus drove them two hours southwest to a town outside Orléans.

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@MindfulR3ferendumAmerican Solidarity from Texas commented…2yrs2Y

As a Portland, Ore resident who has to step into the street to avoid tents blocking the sidewalks and who has to step over used hypodermic needles lying on the ground (literally, not figuratively), I can only dream of a fleet of buses to come and improve my standard of living.

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@PaellaEllaNo Labels from South Carolina commented…2yrs2Y

I think France should have the right to manage undocumented people in whatever way their government sees fit. How does one differentiate an asylum seeker vs someone who is illegally living in the country? If there are processes in place for immigration, then everyone should have to abide by these processes equally. I think a government can be both for migration while still upholding and applying the laws they set in place. Why should any tax paying citizen of Paris have to accept these people as their neighbors?

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@N0minati0nBartNo Labels from Texas commented…2yrs2Y

I would welcome the sight of bussing coming to LA to remove the homeless from their encampments on sidewalks and in parks.

People tend to sidestep that many of these individuals refuse help and refuse to get sober enough to find a job. Not all of them want saving but somehow we are expected to show remorse and 'deal' with the situation as is. Some of these people already had others attempting to help them along the way as they descended into homelessness and now we are expected to continue a pointless feat? No way.

Those who refuse to get into a shelter and receive help should be taken elsewhere, not left there for the general population to deal with. That is a harsh reality, yes but a better solution than the current.