France welcoming more immigrants but losing more citizens

The number of immigrants coming to France has risen since 2006 but a growing number of French nationals are leaving the country, figures released Tuesday showed.

The national statistics institute’s data, published amid growing pressure from the far-right National Front (FN) party over Europe’s migrant crisis, were released ahead of a vote by the French Senate Tuesday on a bill concerning the rights of foreigners.

In 2006, some 193,000 migrants arrived in France compared to 235,000 eight years later in 2013. But the number of departures more than tripled from 29,000 to 95,000 in the same period, the institute said.

That meant that net migration for immigrants — defined as foreigners born abroad — dropped, from 164,000 in 2006 to 140,000 in 2013.

However the analysis pointed to a steady level of immigration to France between 2004 and 2012, with about 200,000 arrivals annually.

The INSEE institute said the results could be explained by the fact that “a majority of people migrating are in their younger years”.

Departures most often were related to students at the end of their studies but also included workers “near the end of a long period of employment” returning to their native country having reached retirement.

An increase in job mobility in the short term between France and other European countries could also partly explain the figures, the institute added.

“More than half of immigrants who entered France in 2012 were born on the continent as opposed to one-third 10 years before,” the study said, with those from Europe comprised mostly of people from Portugal, Britain, Spain, Italy, or Germany.

In the lead-up to the Senate bill on foreigners’ rights, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve had called for calm on the issue, rebutting the idea that there was “an explosion of ‘legal immigration.'”

In fact, only 200,000 residency permits were issued each year from 2006 to 2013 — about 0.3 percent of the population.

During the 2006-2013 period, though, an increasing number of French citizens left — nearly 200,000 in 2013, compared with around 140,000 in 2006.

Mostly younger people leave: 80 percent of those in 2013 were aged between 18 and 29, notably “the prime ages of study or the beginning of a career”.

Many may have been seeking jobs abroad as unemployment in France has been stubbornly high for several years at around 3.5 million people.

According to INSEE, people under 18 accounted for one departure in 10.

Immigrants represented 8.9 percent of the French population as of January 2014, an increase of 0.8 percent compared to 2006.