This has nothing to do with doctors... medical workers are a small minority of the people being granted citizenship, a lot of these were street cleaners, caretakers, grocery store employees...

They just took a bunch of essential workers who would have requested citizenship otherwise and lowered the legal stay requirement from 5 to 2 years for them.

Which is really smart because those people will remember they were valued by the government.

Service guarantees citizenship!

This sounds kinda creepy, but I don't think it is.

To be part of a society is to work together, if you've shown to be willing to go the extra mile for your fellow citizens, it's a good sign of being a good society member.

I see what you did there.

I wouldn't hold my breath too much. Immigrant communities have a lot of resentment for the French government.

This kind of rhethoric weakens the discussion on the site. You can surely rephrase your counterpoint and avoid the implied sarcasm.

Its not necessarily smart, these people will go on to impose large welfare, pension, healthcare burdens on the host society.

Its easy for the French political elite to sign laws like this, but the social and economic burden of these decisions are borne by the lower classes.

Its much more likely that this is a decision to add an extra 12,000 Macron voters to the rolls.

They don’t, in France you pay money into healthcare/retirement and you don’t need citizenship to get welfare.

Valuing people who put their lives on the line during a major healthcare crisis is the right thing to do.

These immigrants in general have more children, who in turn work and pay for your pension. French birthrate is below 2.11.

If French society is anything like Danish society, migrants from certain regions will use more in Government services than they will contribute in taxes:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S00148-017-0636-1

"Immigrants from Western countries have a positive fiscal impact, while immigrants from non-Western countries have a large negative one"

People from certain non-western countries have bigger disadvantages in respect with the language, education, either lack of, or degrees not being recognized, and financial means.

This has nothing to do with those people's culture or willingness to work or something like that. If a German immigrant had the same disadvantages, he would struggle just as much.

Furthermore, the point is moot anyways, because the economical value of a citizen goes beyond simply tax-payments minus benefits-received. These people are also customers that local businesses depend on, and any money spent on benefits will mostly directly flow back into the local economy.

Another important point is that these disadvantages disappear over the generations.

Another VERY important fact is that immigrants actually save us from the massive costs of an increasingly 'grey' society (due to low birth rate).

I'm not going to put every reason here how immigrants provide benefits. But I hope it's clear that there's a little bit more involved with determining economic impact than just tax minus benefits.

I visited Marseille a few years ago and the place is run down by immigrants to the point of no return. Filthy, druggy, prostitution everywhere.

Marseille has been run down by drug trafficking and decades of neglect by the French state not immigrants. In a way it has to do with immigration In that the reason Marseille was so neglected and poor is because it houses a large part of the Algerian diaspora which came after France lost its last colonial war something the French government would rather forget than address.

they contribute to the system so they should be entitled to reap the benefits regardless of citizenship status. Your argument could be said for the unproductives natives as well, who are a burden on society

Will it still be another 1-2 year wait for an interview once they’re eligible or is that being sped up too?

They were granted the citizenship. Already done, finished, they have it if they want it.

They weren't made eligible for requesting it.

Are you basing the question on your experience with the French immigration system? In other words, why would there be a 1-year+ wait for an interview?

Legally, the government has to reply within 18 months after your application, according to the page about Naturalisation on service-public.fr, an official website (idk if I may post links)

In some cities like Lyon, you can indeed wait 1+ year for the process.

Informally, the Administration / "Préfectures" are infamous for being slow, and requests are processed in each administrative division, so you'd rather not be in a city where there are a lot of applicants.

I mean, anyway, being naturalised here happens when you are in a stable situation, and is very symbolic in that case, so there is no rush.

If you live in France, you are welcome to be in here, you can vote for local elections if you're from the EU, you pay taxes or not according to your income, like anyone else, you can access the full social security system and other public services,...

I understand that being French is a stateless concept about living in here and sharing the moment, and it's not just a legal status ; so it makes sense if it takes time, but it arrives eventually.

Depends how good or useless your existing passport is. Travelling as a French national is a lot easier than travelling as an Algerian or Lebanese national. If you’re a Canadian or USian, it’s largely meh to get your French citizenship to travel.

It might be different now. I had read up to 2 years. There is a language requirement, but there used to be no test requirement, so the interview was to at least evaluate that.

Now that they require test results, there’s an added cost, but one less thing to evaluate directly in the citizenship process, so maybe they’ll do away with the interview entirely.

This is the count of people who have already been naturalized. There were 16000 applications and 12000 of those gained the French citizenship.