In 1990, Mgr Jacques Delaporte, Archbishop of Cambrai, the then president of the Commission épiscopale française ‘Justice et Paix’ and formerly head of the Commission épiscopale des migrations, called on behalf of the Church for the full integration of immigrants into French society on the grounds that ‘l'intégration est sans doute, en effet, la solution la plus conforme au respect des Droits de l'homme auquel un chrétien ne peut pas déroger’. This direct link between integration and human rights is significant in terms of the Church's response to the immigration question in France. For if, as has been argued, the publication of the 1789 Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen marks France out in the eyes of the world as the birthplace of human rights, then the Catholic Church was a late convert to the cause. Indeed, while Republican texts and constitutions have continually upheld and restated the principle of human rights since 1789, the Church only finally officially adopted a human rights stance after the Second World War with its approval of the December 1948 universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Church's evolution since that time is such that a human rights policy is now publicly voiced at all levels of the institution from ordinary priests to the Pope himself: for example, during his visit to Reims in September 1996 to celebrate the baptism of Clovis, King of the Franks, in 496 AD, John Paul II defined the Republican values of liberté, égalité, fraternité as ‘valeurs chrétiennes’; and, during the Journées mondiales de la jeunesse catholique held in France in August 1997, the Pope saluted France as ‘le pays des droits de l'homme’, declaring that ‘là où les hommes sont condamnés à vivre dans la misère, les droits de l'homme sont violés: s'unir pour les faire respecter est un devoir sacré’.

In immediate post-war France, however, there were few services provided by the State, the Church or any other body which were dedicated to the reception and integration of immigrants. The government's Office national d'immigration had been created in 1945 in order to manage the post-war influx of European immigrant workers on which France had set her sights, but which failed to materialise, with immigration instead dominated at this time by workers from Algeria.