Clément Viktorovitch returns each week to the debates and political issues. Sunday April 16: the question of immigration, revived by the national secretary of the Communist Party Fabien Roussel.
Fabien Roussel spoke Monday April 10 in Marseille, for the congress of his party. A 50-minute speech, during which he said: “Frankly, look at what they have done to our country! They put France on LeBonCoin, they signed free trade treaties with a vengeance, they turned our borders into sieves and opened France to the four winds , merchants and finance.”
“Borders are sieves” : an outing which earned him immediate criticism from part of the Nupes. Sandrine Rousseau, in particular, reacted on Twitter: “Our borders are not sieves. But, above all, the humans who try to cross them risk their lives every day.” Respondent’s response: “Opposing the outsourcing of our industry and tax evasion should be a pillar of the left.” The controversy would be null and void: what Fabien Roussel would like to control would be the circulation of goods and capital, not immigration.
Fabien Roussel pleads for the misunderstanding. And, apparently, when we take up the relevant passage in the Marseilles speech, there is indeed a question of economic sovereignty. Except that between what we say, and what we make understood, there is sometimes a gap: this is what is called, in rhetoric, the implicit dimension of language. Metaphors, in particular, are never neutral. They still carry the weight of those who used them before. And it turns out that this metaphor, the “colander borders”, has precisely an illustrious filiation: Marine Le Pen in 2022, Éric Zemmour in 2018 and, already in 2007, another Le Pen, Jean-Marie. It does not matter, therefore, what Fabien Roussel says. With this metaphor, what he gives us to hear is perfectly clear: a critical discourse on immigration.
Trial of intent ?
It could possibly be, if Fabien Roussel had not unmasked himself. On BFMTV, he was pushed to his limits by Apolline de Malherbe and let slip that on the question of immigration it was necessary to be “firmer”.
Fabien Roussel is asking for much more firmness on immigration. The image of the colander was therefore not so trivial, nor was it, in reality, so surprising. The secretary of the Communist Party is, in reality, only reconnecting with the speech of an illustrious predecessor, Georges Marchais in January 1981: “We must stop official and illegal immigration. It is unacceptable to let new immigrant workers into France, when our country has nearly two million unemployed, French and immigrants.”
Fight against immigrant workers, who would fuel unemployment and pull wages down: a position assumed, in its time, by the PC, to which Fabien Roussel brings us today.
Does immigration harm the economy?
This question has been well studied by economics and political science. Hélène Thiollet and Florian Oswald wrote a summary of this research for Sciences Po. Their conclusions are clear: the data collected in OECD countries show that immigration has no impact on the employment of inhabitants, and that the overall effect on wages is either neutral or, even, slightly positive.
These are of course averages. When we zoom in, we realize that, in the short term, and for certain job categories, particularly the least qualified, there may be negative effects. But they are not systematic, they are not permanent, they are offset on a global scale, and, above all, they remain extremely limited in scope. Nothing that justifies, therefore, to castigate immigration with feverish metaphors. When it was Georges Marchais who said so, such research did not exist: he could still plead ignorance. But today, when Fabien Roussel goes hunting on this land, he does so with full awareness… and in defiance of science.