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Michel Barnier, Europe’s former chief Brexit negotiator and now candidate for the French presidency, said on October 20 that the country was very divided and accused President Emmanuel Macron of being insensitive to the daily concerns of citizens.
France frequently makes a distinction between EU and non-EU immigrants. Even though EU citizens are counted as “foreigners” in official statistics, the term foreigners, translated simply as foreigners, is used in political discourse to refer to people outside the EU who do not benefit from the free movement of the EU. Some in the English-speaking world have interpreted Barnier’s political platform of strict immigration controls as a clue that he no longer believes in European freedom of movement.
Barnier is embroiled in a heated Les Républicains nomination contest, which has exposed deep schisms within the party and distracted attention from an election campaign that is heating up six months before the election. Euro-intelligence analysts wonder aloud how France, a member of the European Union’s Schengen free movement area, could implement such a ban without breaking European law.
“When the foundation is fragile, when it moves, you can’t build on it,” Barnier told reporters. “The base of our country is weak: our unity is fragile, our unity is in question,” Barnier said.
Barnier claimed unchecked immigration was eroding France’s sense of identity, an appeal to voters on the conservative fringes of the political right, as he seeks to challenge the far right. Immigration appears to be a crucial issue in the campaign.
But, what is the real truth of the immigration picture?
To look closer
In 2020, 6.8 million immigrants live in France, according to INSEE. While the statistics can be interpreted in many ways, it is essential to have an overview, both the figures and the consequences of immigration for the whole of France.
Among EU states, France does not require EU migrants to register for residence. Thus, immigration figures cannot be deduced from information on the number of residence permits issued. Again, the numbers on this front may not be exact, but it is estimated that there are 250,000 undocumented immigrants living in France, many of whom deliver food packages or employed in construction. This number includes asylum seekers who have exceeded the duration of their visa or who have not regularized their immigration status within a deadline.
Despite the fact that the number of asylum applications fell due to the pandemic, France remained the third most popular destination for asylum seekers in Europe last year, behind Germany and Spain . According to Eurostat, 19.6 percent of first-time applicants in the EU have applied in France. Including the 11% of those who did not file an asylum application for the first time, Germany received 1,22,015 asylum applications, followed by France with 93,475 and Spain with 88 540 in 2020. Greece got the fourth highest number of applications, surpassing the UK’s 36,041. candidates. Of the 90,000 requests processed in 2020, protection was granted at approximately 23.7%. In addition, 2,61,000 migrants arrived in France in 2017. At the same time, 63,000 left, including students at the end of their course, reported INSEE.
Despite a significant movement of migrants and asylum seekers to Europe in 2015, migration to France has not increased. “2015 was definitely not a turning point for France,” Virginie Guiraudon, a researcher at Sciences Po specializing in European migration policy, told thelocal.fr. “In comparison, France did not welcome many people”.
Migrants in France come mainly from its former colonies: in 2019, 41% of migrants in France came from Africa, 32% from Europe and a large number of migrants came from Algeria and Tunisia. In 2020, France granted citizenship to immigrants who worked on the front lines during the pandemic, mainly in healthcare, retail, public transport and childcare.
Of the 2,77,406 first-stay cards issued in 2019, only 39,000 had migrated for economic reasons. Mathieu Ichou, head of the International Migration and Minorities research unit at the French Institute for Demographic Studies, told thelocal.fr: “On average, immigrants in France have higher levels of education than those who remained in their country of origin.
According to Ekrame Boubtane, an economist specializing in international migration, 62% of immigrants who arrived in France in 2019 were between 18 and 34 years old, an age group that contributes more positively to public finances in a country with an aging population where a significant proportion of expenditure is devoted to health and pensions.
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