Contrary to President Emmanuel Macron’s statement on Dec. 3 that France has always been a country of immigration, the phenomenon only began as early as the 1870s and was very limited, French-Algerian author and former politician Malika Sorel-Sutter said on television channel CNews.
As Remix News reported yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that “France has always been a land of immigration,” and that “it is part of our DNA, it is the strength of our country, and we have always needed it for our economy.”
However, his remarks have been criticized, with many pointing out their historical inaccuracy, including from Sore-Sutter.
“The reasoning that Emmanuel Macron has presented is totally false. A French historian has made it especially clear that France has never been a land of immigration, that France has grown where it has always been and in reality the first migration phenomena began in 1870 with the arrival of Italian and subsequently Polish immigrants,” Sorel-Sutter said.
Sorel-Sutter also notes that much of the immigration has been limited in the past, and did not fundamentally change the demographics of France. Many of those immigrants were also skilled artisans and intellectuals who did not come in large numbers, were mostly European and Christian, and did not present a serious burden on state budgets.
The advent of non-European immigration is a greatly recent phenomenon, and only in the last decades has it reached enormous proportions that threaten to transform the country demographically.
“Thus, France has never been a land of immigration — there were here and there artists, scientists or cardinals who came to France, but this has remained a mostly anecdotal phenomenon, as intellectuals traveled towards ‘the Europe of light,'” Sorel-Sutter said.
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Sorel-Sutter, who was born to Algerian parents, lived in Algeria for 15 years, and once served as a member of the French Integration Council, has become a prominent and outspoken critic against immigration. Just last month, she said that ethnic French people are headed towards minority status and it could have “serious” consequences.
“We are moving towards a minority of the historical people, of the French people, on French territory and it is very serious,” she said during an appearance on Sud Radio.
“The French government is making a series of decisions that go against the French population and its life, with (society) itself having a majority against immigration,” she added.
She noted during her interview with Sud Radio that the country’s changing demographics will not only drastically transform the country’s electorate, but will also have a knock-on effect on the country’s society, education system, and social programs.
“I would say this will impact the population, the composition of the population, because we see that (migrants) are being offered French nationality. This in turn alters the electorate, which will in turn decide on the social programs and the future values and morality of society. Schools are also important, not only as economic factors, but also in terms of way of life, co-existence, from which the French state is conspicuously missing, and this will have an impact on how we live together.”
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Regarding the actual issue surrounding the economic benefits of migration, numerous studies have shown that immigrants incur dramatic costs for the French. As Remix News reported last year, French author and academic Jean-Paul Gourévitch, on an appearance on Sud Radio, said that employment data shows that it is a myth that immigration to France has economic benefits.
“I have studied this topic extensively, and today everyone in France, from the left to the right, agrees that immigration costs more than it brings in,” Gourévitch said. “There is a major difference between left and right (oriented) economists regarding the costs: The leftist economists say the deficit is 6 to 10 billion (euros per year), while those on the right say it is 40 to 44 billion. My own scientific research shows that the deficit is 20 to 25 billion (euros).”
