Emmanuel Macron wants to “take back control” of immigration in France. At first glance, his government’s forthright language — and its aspirations for a system of numerical “quotas” similar to Canada’s or Australia’s — sounds a lot like the populist clarion call that won Nigel Farage the Brexit referendum.
There are differences, of course. This is about migration from outside the European Union, whereas Farage and his fellow Brexiters were angry about the U.K.’s lack of control over migrant numbers from eastern Europe. And Macron would no doubt say that he just wants the right level of immigration to meet the needs of the French economy. But he appears to have one eye too on trying to neutralize his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen, who’s tied with Macron in the polls. It’s a political ploy that risks backfiring.
As with the rest of the western world, France certainly needs immigration. By 2050 it will have about 9 million more over-65s than it did in 2013. Somebody will have to do the work to pay for that ageing population. Even in an economy where more than 2.5 million people are unemployed, there are jobs that go unfilled because of a shortage of skills or lack of interest from locals.
At the same time as talking tough, the Macron administration wants to double the number of foreign students to about 500,000 by 2027, remove the bureaucratic blocks to getting visas and attract engineering talent from China, India and the U.S. via flexible “tech visas.”
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