The mantra in the liberal West has been one calling for more foreign doctors and students, but this formula is also proving contentious in Western countries, including France, where student immigration is the top driver of new immigrants and taxpayers have to foot the bill for their studies.

The Reconquête leader also points out that these students are using the system to migrate to France permanently. “It’s worth knowing that student immigration has become the leading channel of immigration in France. Under Emmanuel Macron, we went from 80,000 entries per year to 118,000 (+60%), with an absolute record in 2025 under Bruno Retailleau,” wrote Éric Zemmour, head of France’s right-wing Reconquête party, in a lengthy post on X,

🚨Le gouvernement recule et vient d'étendre la gratuité des études supérieures pour les étrangers. Voici pourquoi c'est une mesure injuste.

En théorie, un étudiant étranger, hors UE, est censé payer 2 895€ par année de licence alors qu'une année d'étude supérieure coûte plus…

— Eric Zemmour (@ZemmourEric) May 13, 2026

Meanwhile, out of these foreign students, the vast majority, 82 percent, come from outside Europe. “What interest do we have in training, almost for free, hundreds of thousands of foreign students?” he asks.

Zemmour, author of “The Suicide of France: The Quiet Revolution That Destroyed a Nation,” spelled out exactly how French taxpayers are being forced to pay for the education for hundreds of thousands of foreigners.

“The government is backtracking and has just extended free higher education to foreigners,” he wrote.

“In theory, a non-EU foreign student is supposed to pay €2,895 per year of a bachelor’s degree, while a year of higher education costs the French taxpayer more than €13,000 per year. The difference is paid by all of us: the taxpayers.”

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The real issue, he continued, is that only 9.9 percent of foreign students paid the full discounted tuition for the 2024-2025 year. Some 76.9 percent received a partial exemption, and 13.2 percent attended school for free.

“These exemptions cost between 3 and 4 billion euros in 2025. The government will now allow universities to fully exempt 20% of their foreign students. Who will pay for this false generosity?” Zemmour asks, answering that the French taxpayers will foot the bill.

Macron raises eyebrows with his language choice

Zemmour also recently criticized Macron’s comments last month in Ariège for another reason: his choice of language, specifically the Arab word “magouls,” which means “lunatics.”

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“The President is adopting the language of a certain youth submerged by Arab-Muslim immigration. Language has always been a marker of domination and colonization,” he told Public Sénat.

Macron’s choice of words has to do with another, much smaller, source of immigration:: doctors.

French President Emmanuel Macron used the Arabic word, “mabouls,” to denounce a requirement for non-EU doctors to retake exams to prove their credentials.

“Go tell all the mabouls (crazy ones) who tell us we should be angry with Algeria!” Macron said during a visit to a hospital in Ariège in April.

The French head of state was bemoaning the requirement that foreign (non-EU) doctors retake exams, in this case, singling out those doctors from Algeria, who make up the largest share of foreign, non-EU medical practitioners in France. There have been calls to enforce the same general immigration requirements on people coming from the former French colony as those imposed on migrants from other countries, given the massive benefits allocated to Algerians by the French state.

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Macron called the current system for doctors, while France faces a shortage of medical professionals, a “mess,” adding: “It drives me crazy! It’s the madness of the French system.”

As of early 2025, more than 19,000 doctors in France were trained outside the EU, according to the French Medical Council. Of these, 38.8 percent studied in Algeria, 15.1 percent in Tunisia, 8.6 percent in Syria, 7.4 percent in Morocco, and 4 percent in Lebanon.

At the time of Macron’s comments, National Rally MEP Marine Le Pen clapped back: “I find Emmanuel Macron’s indignation over foreign doctors to be utterly unworthy,” she said. “It is entirely natural that in our country, we require foreign doctors to take an exam, just like French doctors, in order to ensure that the care provided is of the highest possible quality.”

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Back in 2022, Zemmour ended up facing charges of incitement to hatred over his comments linking crime to immigration. When asked whether he believed only immigrants were responsible for crime, he replied, “Yes. In any case, immigrants or children of immigrants.”

A Parisian court, however, ruled that Zemmour’s remarks did not meet the legal standard for incitement to hatred. The judges noted that, “as excessive or provocative as these remarks may seem,” they were directed not at all immigrants, but at “the delinquent fraction.”

Macron says half the crimes in Paris are committed by foreigners

That same year, Macron, who is now pushing for more foreigners to be allowed to treat French citizens without passing the French exam requirements, addressed the same issue of delinquency, stating: “Yes, when we look at delinquency in Paris, we can see that half of the delinquent acts come from foreigners in an irregular situation or awaiting asylum approval.”