France/Africa: Paris hotel fire underscores illegal immigrants’ plight

A fire that swept through a cheap hotel just behind the Paris Opéra last week, claiming 24 lives and leaving dozens of people injured has illuminated a corner of Europe's broader illegal immigration debate - what to do with the Continent's swelling tide of undocumented aliens, known in France as "sans papiers," or "without papers." The hotel was part of a circuit of low-end city lodgings contracted by government-funded agencies to house asylum seekers or undocumented aliens whose requests for residency in France have been denied.