French police said there were some 11, 200 people protested Saturday in Paris against a new immigration bill presented by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarokozy.

The protesters carried banners and wore stickers denouncing the so-called "disposable immigration".

Parliament is to vote Wednesday the law bill promoting the idea of "selected immigration" and making it harder for people without specific qualifications to obtain residence papers for France.

A poll published in French newspapers Le Figaro and LCI Television showed that 76 percent of the respondents favored the new changes in the bill, such as a requirement that immigrants learn French and take civics lessons.

About 73 percent supported a demand in the bill that would allow only legal immigrants who could prove they were financially independent to bring in family members from abroad to join them.

France counted 4.33 million immigrants in 1999, or 7.4 percent of the French population in mainland France, according to the recent official figures released by the French national statistic office.

Source: Xinhua