This is perhaps the most divisive subject. Immigration may be one of the topics of debate at the dinner table during the New Years Eve period. This subject carries in any case its share of figures and statistics … sometimes not very precise.
What if you are told that each year, the equivalent of the city of Lyon immigrates to France?
You can answer that this argument, regularly cited by the right and the far right, is false and fairly easy to verify. The city of Lyon has a little over 500,000 inhabitants according to the latest INSEE census. INSEE, which also tells us that in 2019, there were 272,000 immigrant entries into French territory. Clearly, it is not at all the equivalent of the population of the city of Lyon but only a little more than half.
Not to mention that among the immigrants, some are leaving, such as students. If we look at the migratory balance in the latest data from INSEE, in 2017, for 261,000 foreigners who entered France, 63,000 left, which makes a balance of 198,000 people. Moreover, since 2006, net migration in France is almost always below the 200,000 mark.
And what if we are told that medical care is free for undocumented foreigners?
You could argue that this is false and say that state medical aid, which has often been the subject of debate for many years, is not given automatically. It is necessary to make the request and to be able to justify in particular of an uninterrupted presence of three months on the French territory.
Then, with regard to care, State medical aid gives the right, it is true, to 100% coverage of medical and hospital care but within the limits of Social Security tariffs. Clearly, the beneficiary will not pay if he sees a general practitioner from sector 1, on the other hand, he will have to pay if there are excess fees and this can be expensive, for example in the case of dental prostheses or eyeglasses. Not to mention that the AME does not cover everything, for example care related to medically assisted reproduction or thermal cures are not covered.