The Day I Became French

Yesterday I was invited to an official ceremony at the "Préfecture" to mark my new French citizenship. I was not alone. There were no less than 130 "new" French citizens present, plus their friends and family. Knowing what an important day it was for me, FH had taken the day off to accompany his new French wife...

We were all welcomed into the beautiful, imposing salons of the Préfecture, and a short film was shown about what it means to be French. The balance between patriotism and simple national pride was just about right, and the onus was definitely on "this is a two-way contract, and France is honoured that you have chosen to become its citizens." It was all very uplifting, apart from the rather sobering reminder that it is now our duty to defend France in the event of war...
(plus, pregnant women were given priority for the too few seats, so that was nice).

After that, we were all upstanding for the national anthem, the Marseillaise. Again, it was patriotic, but not uncomfortably so...

Finally, each new citizen was called up one by one, and presented with a "welcome pack", a bise (of course) and a few polite words from the "sous-Préfet" (a bit like a British mayor, I suppose, but I'm not very well up on the intricacies of the French administrative system...).

It was all quite moving: I watched the other candidates closely and it was obvious that all of them found the ceremony, and the act of becoming French, meaningful. I don't know what their individual stories are, but I'd be curious to find out: a wide range of ages and origins were represented (although as a European with no real "need" to become French, I was definitely in the minority).
France gives itself a lot of bad press about its attitude to immigrants, and the media likes to chastise us as an immigrant hostile country.
But it's interesting to bear in mind that there are 11 of these ceremonies every year in Toulouse alone... and at the national level, about 100,000 "immigrants" obtain French citizenship every year. This figure is far superior to the highly publicised "expulsions" (the horrible scenes of illegal immigrants being forced onto planes and sent away) that we are often subjected to...


I'm not saying that everything is perfect, of course, and I know that racism and injustice exist here as they do in every country (see last week's anecdote, for example).
But sometimes it's good to remember that thousands of people do make it through the system, are welcomed into the fold and made to feel part of the national community.
And most of them are not white-skinned, or rich, or well-connected.

Yesterday, I was one of them and I left with a sincere feeling of gratitude.