When Nicolas Sarkozy came on the political scene a few years ago and began to speak out on subjects that had been tabooed by other French politicians, I cheered for him. He told it like it is.

He was a voice in the wilderness warning the French people of the enemy within and he was so correct. When those Muslim youths in the suburbs of Paris began their pillaging, bashing and burning he referred to them as scum and he said that the French should not have to put up with such criminal behaviour.

At the time there was a wet noodle outcry from Left-Wingers and PC fanatics who did not want to call a spade a spade. What followed was the usual discussion about why these Muslims had taken to violence. Before long there was a mea culpa mentality that said that somehow the Muslims were not to blame for the destruction. It was the fault of society blah blah. Nobody liked them, nobody respected them. Can’t say I’m surprised by that. What’s there to like?

Sarkozy said no to the violence. The youth were behaving badly and should stop. He had much opposition from the establishment, but in spite of not being originally a Gallic gentleman and in spite of not being a sook, he became president of France.

I suspect that Sarkozy was an idea whose time had come. France, a very socialist country, was fed up with these groups of bludgers who contributed nothing but anger and conflict.

What’s worse is that their numbers would increase because of the family reunion scheme that exists in France and in Australia and other Western countries.

Such a scheme is open to abuse since it provides an entry into a country on the say-so of someone who could be lying or could have bribed a resident to pretend that the illegal is his relative. So the current government of France has adopted an immigration bill to DNA test foreigners who want to join relatives in France.

There are another 12 European countries which allow DNA testing for immigration.

I would like to go further than that. We waste precious resources and time trying to identify missing persons, criminals and victims of terror. We sometimes incarcerate the wrong person for crimes that were committed by someone else. When an innocent person is pronounced guilty and has to spend years in gaol while the culprit roams free in society, I am infuriated by such a miscarriage of justice. DNA has become the holy grail in freeing these innocents. So imagine if everyone were DNA tested how much easier and fairer would it be? How many innocents are languishing in gaol right now?

DNA testing is not perfect, but it is an improvement. An interesting aside to the Sarkozy bill is that the Socialists, bless their bleeding little hearts, said that it was unfair to test potential immigrants on genetic grounds. I would have thought that belonging to a family is purely genetic. All this family reunion question has nothing to do with permitting entry to refugees on human rights grounds. Surely the refugee question is a separate issue altogether.