France's ADA card (Allocation de Demandeur d’Asile) was introduced to offer asylum seekers a safe and secure manner to access their state monthly payments. But between March and April this year, the number of people to receive the ADA dropped by 2,415. During this period, the country was under a strict nationwide lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Migrant rights experts are now questioning how this is linked to the drop in figures.

This week Gérard Sadik, an asylum specialist at the French NGO, Cimade, tweeted, “While no new [asylum] applications were registered, no decisions notified,” due to the health crisis, “there should have been stability or a slight increase” in the number of ADA beneficiaries – not a decrease.

@OFII_France a publié des données sur le nombre de bénéficiaires de l’ADA en avril. pic.twitter.com/pITM5x1Xds

— Gerard Sadik (@SadikGerard) June 2, 2020

But the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Office français de l’immigration et de l’integration, or OFII in French) has stressed that it has not made any undisclosed withdrawal of aid during the lockdown period.

"We haven't cut the ADA as some people suggest," Didier Leschi, OFII director general, told InfoMigrants. "The law that was recently passed to deal with the health crisis even provides for the rights of ADA beneficiaries to be extended until the July payment," he said. 

>> Read more: Everything you need to know about the new ADA card The drop in the number of beneficiaries during this period, according to Leschi, can be explained by the fact that some obtained their refugee status in early March, before the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 17. There were also spontaneous departures, he explained, with 800 people leaving state shelter facilities on their own, he explained. Out of 5,000 people appealing their asylum rejections, more than 200 also left state accommodation centers on their own, Leschi noted.

Withdrawal of rights?

Cimade representatives fear the drop in the number of ADA beneficiaries is a result of OFII’s withdrawal of rights for "refusing or abandoning accommodation" or for “not adhering to the Dublin Regulation,” an EU-wide law covering asylum regulations in the 27-member bloc. Sadik also worries that ADA cards were simply "deactivated without reason."

OFII officials confirm that there were accommodation refusals. "It is a concern that I am currently encountering with refugees in Ile-de-France [the Paris region] to whom I am offering CPH [provisional state accommodation] that they are refusing. In this case, yes, I cut off the ADA. But that only concerns a few dozen people," said Leschi.

>> Read more: Changes in France's ADA card

Interpretation of figures

According to Leschi, the fear that ADA rights were summarily terminated could have been due to a misinterpretation of figures. “The number of beneficiaries is not the number of households receiving benefits. There are more single people than families from one month to the next and this gives the impression that there are fewer recipients," he said.

"In April, we saw a drop in the number of recipient households, spontaneous exits and people who received their CNDA [final court of appeals] notifications before the lockdown. At the same time, there were no additional asylum applications since everything was stopped, so this did not compensate for the departures".

The OFII stressed that there are only three cases that could lead to an ADA cancellation or disqualification: - when an expulsion decision is final (after an appeal to the CNDA). - when a declaration of flight is made by the police (not applicable during a state of health emergency). - when a beneficiary refuses to be referred to a shelter.

The OFII, which is currently renewing its ADA cards, also warns that the appointment fixed by its services for the allocation of a new card is mandatory, otherwise the allowance will be cut again.