E/CN.4/1998/79 page 30 Congress, business leaders and individuals, encouraging them to become involved in reconciliation and community building projects; and a President's Report to the nation on the status of the race issue. 116. The President's Report, to be issued at the end of September 1998, is to present his vision of One America, including an assessment of the growing diversity of the nation, and the results of the President's consultations with the Advisory Board; to reflect the work done during the first year of implementation of the initiative, including the conversations and suggestions made at meetings and other venues; to report on how the nation has evolved on the issue of race over the last 30 years, among other things, by studies commissioned for the initiative; and to make recommendations and propose solutions enabling individuals, communities, businesses, organizations and government to address difficult issues and to create a society built on a sounder basis. 117. The Special Rapporteur is deeply appreciative of this step taken by the United States Government, which is a response to the recommendations he made in his report on that country in 1994. (c) France 118. In his report to the fifty-first session of the General Assembly (A/51/301) the Special Rapporteur referred to the increased severity of the Pasqua/Debré laws governing foreign residents and the determination of the French authorities to adopt measures designed to strengthen control over immigration by non-Europeans. The measures then envisaged included making the issuance of short-stay visas more systematically subject to proof of health insurance (a formality which would be required of nationals of countries where the “migratory risk” was high; improving the identification of visa applicants from those countries; reforming the procedure for the issuance of the “certificat d'hébergement” (inter alia, by requiring the provider of accommodation to give notice of the visitor's departure); restricting hospital care for illegal immigrants to “emergencies” or to diseases likely to be contagious; and extending to 40 days the period of detention for persons who entered France illegally. 119. The Special Rapporteur had emphasized the discriminatory nature of the proposed measures. He welcomed the new measures recently envisaged by the new French Government. 10/ These include regularization of the status of certain categories of undocumented aliens 11/ and the drafting of a preliminary bill on the entry and sojourn of foreign nationals in France. This preliminary bill contains provisions designed to facilitate the sojourn of foreign nationals and the granting of visas, the latter with particular reference to researchers, students and persons with strong ties to France (parents, descendants, spouses, etc.). Another bill, on nationality, currently under discussion in the French Parliament, seeks to revert to the ius soli system. 120. All these measures are still under discussion. However, they appear to reflect a trend that differs markedly from the approach which governed the adoption of the Pasqua/Debré laws. The Special Rapporteur welcomes this promising development, even though it is controversial; he hopes that these