FRANCE:France's right-wing interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday took pride in having discouraged asylum-seekers and stopping or expelling record numbers of would-be immigrants in 2006.
France received 57,616 applications for asylum in 2004 - more than any other country in the world, Mr Sarkozy told a press conference. But he brought that down to 52,000 last year and achieved a further decrease of 35 per cent this year.
"Illegal immigration networks . . . understood the message we sent them: France refuses illegal immigration. France intends to choose its migrants," Mr Sarkozy said. "Our policy of firmness is paying off."
In the first 11 months of this year, Mr Sarkozy said, his services turned around 33,000 prospective immigrants as they attempted to enter France. The number of immigrants "reaccompanied to the frontier" has more than doubled in three years, reaching 24,000 this year.
Add the 2,000 people whom France paid to leave under a "voluntary return" programme, and Mr Sarkozy kept 59,000 foreigners out of France this year.
The minister's critics accuse him of inflating the figures by rounding up Bulgarians and Romanians, who accounted for 25 per cent of expulsions from France this year. It will be more difficult when their countries join the EU on January 1st.
The presidential candidate quoted an opinion poll showing that 63 per cent of French people believe there are too many immigrants in France. Half of left-wing voters agree, which may explain why the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal does not contest Mr Sarkozy's stringent measures. The interior minister yesterday spoke of setting target numbers of expulsions for France's prefects (civil governors), and of increasing to 40 per year the number of charter flights to remove illegal immigrants from French territory.
Since the extreme right-wing anti-immigration candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the run-off in the 2002 presidential election, Mr Sarkozy has stretched the parameters of politically correct anti-immigrant rhetoric.
"I remain astounded by the power of the taboos that dominate the question of immigration in France," he said. "For decades, anyone who pronounced the word 'immigration' was called an extremist, a populist or a racist."
At least three times yesterday , Mr Sarkozy singled out Africans and north African Arabs as a problem. "The great movements of population are before us," he predicted, noting that 900 million Africans live on less than $1 per day, that half the population of the impoverished continent is under the age of 17, and that African women have 5.2 children each, compared to 1.5 children per European woman.
Mr Sarkozy blamed lax immigration policy for "the ghettoisation of immigrant populations" in 700 banlieues plagued by crime and violence. "France doesn't have the means to welcome all who want to come," he said, adding that foreigners in France have an average unemployment rate of 20 per cent. "As for persons of certain African and north African origins, their unemployment rate is between 30 and 40 per cent," the minister said.
Mr Sarkozy thinks France gives too many student visas to Africans and not enough to Asians, who have gone instead to North America. France is missing an opportunity to introduce the French language to China and of receiving "quality" Asian students, he said.
Asked by The Irish Times whether the fact that he is the son and grandson of immigrants should not make him more understanding towards France's new arrivals, Mr Sarkozy, who appeared visibly annoyed by the question, said: "I don't see the connection. If each of us determined our policies in terms of our personal history, you'd have to be careful when choosing the president of the Republic," he added.
Mr Sarkozy said that if he becomes president of France, he will lobby for a European immigration policy based on "the rejection of mass regularisations; the establishment of an efficient outside frontier; shared rules on asylum and family reunification; the principle of expulsion for illegal migrants and foreign delinquents . . ."
After the press conference, Mr Sarkozy raced off to the prefecture of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, where one-third of inhabitants are foreign citizens. In 30 minutes, he congratulated civil servants for expelling 772 immigrants as of late November and for their "firm and just approach" to their work - despite 12-hour queues.
Most of the clerks in the immigration office were women of African and north African origin. They smiled as Mr Sarkozy posed with them for the television cameras. He gobbled a few canapés from the buffet and dashed out a side door, avoiding the protestors who'd gathered in the rain.
"Sarkozy, don't throw my son out," one placard pleaded.