Abstract EN:

At first glance, the mention of a fundamental right of residence in favor of foreigners may appear surprising, as it would completely go against both the rigor of national policy on immigration and against the solutions based on current rights that deny the existence of such a right and that subsume the issue of foreigner residency to a logic of national sovereignty. Nevertheless, there are, among a foreigner's fundamental rights, certain rights that can be opposed to the implementation of police measures and that can, moreover, result in a guarantee for a foreigner's residency by simple virtue of the protection of the right in question. In exercising their fundamental rights, foreigners are given the ability to enter the immigration territory or even to remain there, depite the enactment of a deportation measure. The fundamental right to reside, revealded in this manner, is however never entirely autonomous. Instead, it results from a mediation mechanism, given that it only exists through the application of other fundamental rights. It is nonetheless necessary to note that the impact of a foreigner's fundamental rights on their residency will not lead to the full assimilation of the foreigner as a member of the national community. The fundamental rights system for foreigners remais in continual confrontation with the logic of national sovereignty, and this logic is quick to reappear and to constrain the residency of non-nationals. In the end, only a restricted number of foreigners are able to take advantage of the right to reside. And when their residency is legitimate, the foreigners have no guarantee of receiving a valid residency card. In other words, no right to regularize residency is automatically associated with the right to remain in the immigration territory. The logic of the rights most certainly constrains the public powers' freedom of action, although in no way does it make this freedom disappear.