French MPs debate Syrian refugees as Germany tightens border with Alsace

Germany on Wednesday stepped up controls on its border with France, as the Europe's migrant crisis deepened. In the afternoon the French parliament debated the government's decision to admit 24,000 refugees to the country.

Migrants arrested by Hungarian police after having broken through the fence erected along the border with Serbia Reuters/Dado Ruvic

German police announced that they were sending a "large part" of the 1,900-strong police force in Baden-Wurttenburg land to the border with the French region of Alsace, following Sunday's decision to reintroduce border controls, especially with Austria.

Meanwhile in Paris, the lower house of parliament debated the migrant crisis with party lines more sharply drawn than in Tuesday's debate on air strikes in Syria.

For the Socialists and the rest of the left, France can and must take in refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

There should not be "a series of improvisations for electoral ends", Socialist parliamentary spokesperson Olivier Faure said ahead of the debate.

"Perhaps we should remember that, following the 1920 Armenian genocide, France was able to accept 100,000 Armenians," Green Noël Mamère pointed out. "Did the country fall apart?"

But the mainstream right Republicans (LR), who held a working group on immigration in the morning, are not so sure.

"Giving people to understand that we can take in all the Syrian refugees while we don't have the capacity to take them - homes, education and jobs to offer them - would be irresponsible," MP Bruno Lemaire said.

LR leader Nicolas Sarkozy has opposed the European Union's quotas.

He has called for a status of "war refugee" to be created, differentiating its holders from political refugees so that they can be sent back to their country when the conflict is over.

Far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen on Wednesday accused "Empress" Angela Merkel of opening the floodgates for "tens of thousands of extra illegal immigrants", while her niece, MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen said she "understood" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's call for Western support against "terrrorism".

"The flood of refugees, those who really are refugees, are not in reality fleeing Bashar al-Assad," she told Sud radio. "But they are fleeing the advance of the Islamic State."

One voice raised in favour of welcoming Syrian refugees has been that of 91-year-old singer Charles Aznavour.

He has appealed for French villages to provide homes for them and at a concert in Paris on Tuesday he sang The Emigrants, a song he wrote 30 years ago referring to his Armenian origins.

The French government would like to see a European Council meeting on the crisis but hopes that some decisions will be made before that, notably at next Tuesday's meeting of interior ministers, government spokesperson Stéphane Le Foll said Wednesday.