London, Feb 5(ANI): French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans for one of the toughest immigration laws in Europe has been thrown out by lawmakers, with one likening it to the Vichy regime in France that collaborated with the Nazis.
French MPs had approved the law last year to strip people or their French nationality if they had been citizens for less than ten years and threatened the police.
The proposed rules would also have seen immigrants expelled if they were an 'unreasonable' strain on the welfare state or guilty of 'aggressive begging'.
The law presented by then-Immigration Minister Eric Besson had Sarkozy's full backing, but members of French senate rejected the law by an overwhelming 182 votes to 156.
"It was the Vichy regime of occupied France which invented denaturalization," the Daily Mail quoted Nathalie Goulet, as saying during the debate.
Goulet told how members of her own family were stripped of their nationality in 1941 before being sent to Auschwitz.
David Assouline, a Socialist said: "The National Front party has made proposals for a similar law, which would create two categories of French citizens."
The rejection of the law has been hailed as a "victory over inhumanity" by French immigrants' rights. (ANI)
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