They just took a bunch of essential workers who would have requested citizenship otherwise and lowered the legal stay requirement from 5 to 2 years for them.
To be part of a society is to work together, if you've shown to be willing to go the extra mile for your fellow citizens, it's a good sign of being a good society member.
Its easy for the French political elite to sign laws like this, but the social and economic burden of these decisions are borne by the lower classes.
Its much more likely that this is a decision to add an extra 12,000 Macron voters to the rolls.
Valuing people who put their lives on the line during a major healthcare crisis is the right thing to do.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S00148-017-0636-1
"Immigrants from Western countries have a positive fiscal impact, while immigrants from non-Western countries have a large negative one"
This has nothing to do with those people's culture or willingness to work or something like that. If a German immigrant had the same disadvantages, he would struggle just as much.
Furthermore, the point is moot anyways, because the economical value of a citizen goes beyond simply tax-payments minus benefits-received. These people are also customers that local businesses depend on, and any money spent on benefits will mostly directly flow back into the local economy.
Another important point is that these disadvantages disappear over the generations.
Another VERY important fact is that immigrants actually save us from the massive costs of an increasingly 'grey' society (due to low birth rate).
I'm not going to put every reason here how immigrants provide benefits. But I hope it's clear that there's a little bit more involved with determining economic impact than just tax minus benefits.
In some cities like Lyon, you can indeed wait 1+ year for the process.
Informally, the Administration / "Préfectures" are infamous for being slow, and requests are processed in each administrative division, so you'd rather not be in a city where there are a lot of applicants.
If you live in France, you are welcome to be in here, you can vote for local elections if you're from the EU, you pay taxes or not according to your income, like anyone else, you can access the full social security system and other public services,...
I understand that being French is a stateless concept about living in here and sharing the moment, and it's not just a legal status ; so it makes sense if it takes time, but it arrives eventually.
Now that they require test results, there’s an added cost, but one less thing to evaluate directly in the citizenship process, so maybe they’ll do away with the interview entirely.
They weren't made eligible for requesting it.