Is immigration, legal and illegal, breaking “records” in France?

Alpes-Maritimes MP Eric Ciotti denounced mass immigration in France, saying it was breaking “records”. And indeed, immigration has never been as high as in 2022, but that was due to the war in Ukraine.

The day after 12 migrants died in the Channel while attempting to cross to the United Kingdom, Eric Ciotti called once again for greater control of immigration. “Whether it’s illegal immigrants or legal foreigners, we’re breaking records”declared the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes on Wednesday September 4 on France 2. This is not the first time that the man who had reached an agreement with Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête! party for the legislative elections of July 2024 has denounced the mass arrivals on French territory.

His observation is factually true. In 2022, more than 330,000 migrants arrived in France, according to the INSEE census, which indiscriminately counts people who are in a regular situation and those who are in an irregular situation. This is significantly more than in previous years: 246,000 in 2021, 218,000 in 2020 and around 270,000 in 2018 and 2019 compared to around 200,000 in the mid-2000s.

But what is less well known is that this sharp increase in 2022 is mainly due to the war in Ukraine. “The increase is particularly marked for people from European countries other than those of the European Union, notably Ukraine or Russia”explains INSEE in a report published in April 2024. Immigration from these countries has increased by 200% in one year, reaching 72,000 people.

At the same time, arrivals from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa increased by only 13%, those from the Middle East and Turkey increased by 16%. In total, 134,000 European foreigners arrived in France in 2022, compared to 114,000 Africans, 52,000 people from Asia and 30,000 from America and Oceania.

But looking only at entries into the territory is not very relevant because, if there are migrants who arrive, there are also those who leave. A third of them, for example, are students who came to France just to study and who returned to their country afterwards.

It is therefore better to refer to the net migration of immigrants – not to be confused with the general net migration, which also includes the movements of French people. It is the difference between the number of immigrants who come to the territory and those who leave. This therefore allows us to know how many more immigrants there really were in a year in France.

The latest available net migration is that of 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, so it is not very representative. It was 160,000. A year slightly down compared to previous years since the net migration of immigrants had reached 222,000 in 2016 and 2018, driven by the increase in the number of minors arriving in France in the midst of the migration crisis.

Here too, these figures were records. According to the INSEE archives, the net migration of immigrants was around 65,000 between 1975 and 1999, then around 145,000 on average between 1999 and 2010, and 168,000 on average from 2010 to 2015. If you search on the internet, you can find traces of a much higher net migration in 1962, as reported by the Centre d’observation de la société, but this was the net migration in general and it was driven by the very large number of repatriations of French people from Algeria.

The INSEE also notes that the general migratory balance, of immigrants and non-immigrants, is the main reason for the dynamism of French demography. “It would thus contribute almost three quarters to the increase in the population”explains the statistics institute, while the natural balance which calculates the difference between the number of births and deaths in a year has been decreasing for years.

Having noted all this, it must be remembered that France welcomes relatively few migrants if we compare their number to the French population. According to Eurostat, France welcomed six migrants per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022. It is one of the three countries that welcome the least in the European Union, just ahead of Bulgaria and Slovakia.