Though keeping an eye on things ongoing in Europe (not only in France, we hear just as much from the Netherlands, Belgium, Scandinavia, Germany, the UK on matter regarding immigration) definitely influenced measures being discussed here.
I think you mostly just have a lot more Muslims than we have here, because all you describe we also have (families coming later, weddings etc.), but on a much smaller scale, and it's far more recent (the type of immigration you describe, we began to have in a more substantial way only in the last 10-15 years or so).
You accurately describe our earlier waves of Muslim immigration (largely well educated families with some means, refugees from Lebanon or Palestine, immigrants from Maghreb leaving out of fear of fundamentalism in the 70s - mostly academics and professionals etc.). I'm not sure I would describe those immigrants as "progressive" so much as in a majority they're just not religious (like a small majority of people here). Many were also already here by the time fundamentalists made women wear the hijab again.
The more recent immigration is much closer in demographics to that you have in Europe (just far less numerous for now). In fact a lot of the more recent immigrants no longer come directly from Maghreb or the Middle-East or Turkey but have spent many years in Western Europe, leaving France or Switzerland, Germany etc. either because of the social climate or the economic crisis. We also got a whole wave of immigrants from former Yugoslavia, especially Kosovo.
By the way, a vast majority of people are totally tolerant of the hijab in daily life (the burka and niqab are another story) even though they disagree with the values it carries. There's no question of forbidding it anywhere but with all the other religious symbols within the civil service (and it seems likely the final project will ban them only for people in position of authority, or influence over minors: bosses, judges, policemen, state attorneys, teachers and kindergarten employees).
It's far more a return of religion in the common public space (by which I mean essentially the public schools) that people are afraid or in disagreement with, and that's not especially targeted at the Muslim immigration so much as a reflect of our strong anti-clericalism. We lived in subservience to the Catholic Church until the 1960s (in the 40s no law were passed without the PM "consulting" first the archbishops and Cardinals, we were virtually a parliamentary theocracy) when we finally got rid of their grip over politics, healthcare and education with the creation of the public Ministries(which lead the Vatican to take the preemptive measure, before the government acted under mounting public pressure, to order all the priests and nuns who would become civil servants to give up the roman collars and habits in the public space. Many retired, those who continued to teach do so in secular clothes, except in some private schools and seminaries). In 2000 we finally abolished the catholic/protestant school boards to replace them with linguistic boards, and got rid of denominational religious courses to replace them with a course on the ethical systems of world religions (in my day, priests still came to confess us at elementary schools 4 times a year, teachers still had to teach us catechism and prepare us for sacraments, meat was forbidden on friday in schools until the 60s and none of that was optional.). It's true enough that presently it's Muslims who primarily ask for accommodations for prayers and in the cafeteria, but it's really not the fact it's a non Christian religion that irritates, it's the return of any religious practice in schools that does. It doesn't help reassure people that the vocal supporters of "religious rights" in the present debate are the Catholic high clergy (who aren't that concerned directly, people can wear a cross under their clothes, but they defend the hijab... a year after losing in the Supreme Court their struggle to allow parents to remove their children from the course explaining the ethics and practices of world religions...), evangelist groups, the few ultra-orthodox Jews and well identified ultra-conservative Imams, the very same people who regularly band up at the barricades to abolish gay or women's rights (anti gay wedding, anti abortion, anti state paid contraception - the usual) in the name of "morality" are now at the barricades in the name of defending democracy and individual rights over collective ones.
As for handshakes they're falling out of favor since doctors wage war on the practice as being responsible for a whole lot of colds.
