CAT/C/23/D/93/1997 page 8 5.5 No lawyer or association would take the responsibility of advising the author to enter a fresh application for asylum, either in 1995 or nowadays. Doing so would almost automatically lead to the author’s expulsion. Under French law, any application by an alien for permission to reside in France (and hence for asylum, a request for asylum being possible and admissible only after residence for that purpose has been authorized by the administration) requires the applicant to go in person to the prefecture, pursuant to article 3 of the decree dated 30 June 1946 as amended and definitively interpreted by the Council of State. That, of course, has a strong deterrent effect since anyone who is not already in possession of residence papers or a residence permit is ipso facto liable to be issued with an immediate deportation order. Thus proceedings to regularize an alien’s situation often result in the alien being arrested at the counter in the prefecture, served notice of a deportation order, and deported a few days later. 5.6 The State party wrongly maintains that, before the decree dated 14 March 1997 which prohibits any application for asylum before the prefect has granted permission to reside in France, nothing prevented the author from approaching OFPRA. Before the decree, any fresh application from an asylum-seeker who had been once refused was considered inadmissible because it conflicted with a previous final decision: the ipso facto result was the deportation of the applicant. Thus, when the author submitted a second application for asylum in March 1993 the only concrete result was the issue in the following few days of the customary deportation order and a decision to expel him to Zaire on 15 April 1993. Only following the rulings by the Council of State on 21 June 1996 (Prefect of Yvelines v. SARR, No. 168785 and Lakkis, No. 16053) was the right of a “reapplicant” for asylum to reside in France recognized in certain cases, and then only for a short while, since the decree of 14 March 1997 expressly banned any fresh application in the absence of permission from a prefect to reside in France. It is scarcely realistic, therefore, to suggest that the author ought to have submitted a third application, and no one with professional experience of the law on aliens would have considered doing so. What is more, until 14 March 1997, which was the date on which the decree took effect, the author was still legally banned from French territory for three years by the decision handed down by the Paris Correctional Court on 14 March 1994, and could not by definition be granted permission to reside in France - and thus to submit an application for asylum, which necessarily supposed previous authorization to reside in France. 5.7 The State party wrongly suggests that, after 14 March 1997, the author could have approached OFPRA even without being authorized to reside in France. Under French law, OFPRA cannot be approached directly; it only considers applications for asylum forwarded by a prefecture which has granted the asylum-seeker permission to reside in France. 5.8 As regards the assignment to a fixed place of residence (which confers no right to work, welfare coverage, etc.), counsel argues that this is a discretionary measure which the administration may take but which cannot be requested from an independent authority or court: it cannot therefore be regarded as a “judicial remedy” within the meaning of international law. As the State party indicates, the administration may take such a step if it considers it has been shown that the individual concerned cannot return to his country of origin in view, inter alia , of the risks to which he is exposed. It will be recalled that, for seven years, the administration has taken the view, when the question of asylum, residence or expulsion has arisen, that returning to his country of origin will not cause the author any problem. It is hard to see how things would be any different if the question of assignment to a fixed place of residence arose.