As a Frenchman, I've got to say I'm very bitter at this story. The guy sure deserves citizenship and deserves to be praised for what he did. The problem is how, every time some refugee/migrant/whatever you call them does something great, there's a huge media coverage about how the guy is cool and deserves citizenship, and our governments are kind of praised for doing so. Yet, in the mean time, the same government has ordered to cut refugee tents in order to prevent them from sleeping in some places, among other not-so-cool actions towards refugees. There's also a lot of coverage when one migrant or refugee does something bad (obviously).
What I fear is that it tends to reinforce the idea that to deserve citizenship, one needs to do heroic stuff, or at least something flashy, for starters. Secondly, that when one refugee does something heroic, HE has to be given some consideration, but when one refugee does something bad, the image of refugees as a whole does suffer.
You are a citizen either because you are lucky to be born here or because you are useful for the country.
This does not mean you need to be z hero, just work and pay your taxes. Yet you have people who come to abuse our generous system (which I am grateful for and happy to pay extravagant taxes for).
I do not know what the ratio of leeches to normal people is, and this lack of knowledge is one of the reasons for the fear / hatred against immigrants.
The previous president did that many times on purpose. The goal is to show immigrants positively to widen the gap with the far right (their main political enemy).
BTW this guy is a real hero and deserves to be recognized.
What I fear is that it tends to reinforce the idea that to deserve citizenship, one needs to do heroic stuff, or at least something flashy, for starters. Secondly, that when one refugee does something heroic, HE has to be given some consideration, but when one refugee does something bad, the image of refugees as a whole does suffer.