Europe is feeling the strain of mass immigration – by Gavin Mortimer for The Spectator – 03.02.25

Britain can’t cope, that was the response of Nigel Farage to last week’s disclosure by the Office for National Statistics that the population will hit 72.5 million in 2032. The leader of Reform said that Britain has already reached saturation point at 67.6 million, adding: ‘Our quality of life for all of us is diminishing directly as a result of the population explosion.’

The French feel the same, and examples abound of the strain being placed on the country as a result of mass immigration.

The Friday before last a class of schoolchildren in Paris were having a PE lesson when it came to an abrupt halt. City Council officials arrived and ordered the children to collect their belongings and vacate the sports hall because it was needed to house 200 migrants. ‘I was not consulted or even informed by Paris City Hall,’ said a furious Jérémy Redler, mayor of the 16th arrondissement.

Another building occupied in Paris is the Gaîté Lyrique, a theatre in the third arrondissement, which was taken over by 200 young migrants on December 10. Their numbers have now doubled and they are refusing to move until they are promised suitable accommodation.

One of the minors, a 16-year-old from Guinea, expressed his anger this week that since arriving in France last year he has had to sleep rough. ‘The country of human rights has not kept its promises,’ he complained. Another youngster, from Senegal, demanded they be given ‘a right to health, to school and a need to be integrated.’

In the meantime, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has been fending off attacks from the left and the centre after he said that many French felt ‘submerged’ by immigration. This remark produced howls of outrage, not just from Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left la France Insoumise, but from the likes of Yaël Braun-Pivet, the centrist president of the National Assembly, and the Socialist party.

So enraged were the Socialists by Bayrou’s comments that they cancelled a crucial meeting about the budget, and there was even talk of working to bring down Bayrou and his government. ‘It is difficult for us to allow a government to continue whose leader uses a word that Marine Le Pen would not have disowned,’ said one Socialist MP. ‘It’s a moral break. It’s totally irresponsible and makes no sense whatsoever.’

But words like ‘submersion’ do make sense to the majority of French, as an opinion poll revealed in the light of the Prime Minister’s remark. Sixty-seven per cent of respondents agreed with Bayrou’s choice of words. This is no surprise given that for over a decade a similar polls have constantly returned the same percentage. In January 2013, for instance, 70 per cent of French surveyed said there were too many foreigners in their country.

And how did the political elite respond? They turbo-charged immigration. Between 1997 and 2023, the number of new residence permits granted to people outside the EU has increased in France by 175 per cent; the number of first-time asylum applications has rocketed by 245 per cent between 2009 and 2023, and one million asylum seekers have been registered since 2013, the year when the French complained that there were already too many foreigners.

On top of these numbers, there are the illegal immigrants, estimated to be in the region of 900,000 in France, the majority of whom are from Africa. The most popular route is now via Spanish territory, particularly the Canary Islands. Forty-seven thousand migrants alighted on the islands in 2024, and 3,223 have landed in the first two weeks of this year.

Many of the arrivals have been promised by the smuggling gangs that the streets of Europe are paved with gold. One West African – a student who decided to come to Europe to improve his job prospects – told a journalist last month: ‘We are suffering here… I never thought it would be so complicated in Spain.’

The reality is chastening and sometimes leads to resentment and crime. Last week in Calais a doctor was mugged by a gang of 20, some of whom wielded iron bars. The doctor’s phone was recovered from a migrant camp and nine Afghans have been arrested.

Marine Le Pen joined the criticism of Bayrou last week, though in her case it was to scold him for saying that the French ‘felt’ submerged by immigration. ‘It’s not a feeling but a reality’, said Le Pen. 

It is a reality that many of Europe’s political elite still refuse to confront, and no one more than Angela Merkel. Last week the former German Chancellor rebuked Friedrich Merz, her successor as leader of the centre-right CDU party, for pushing through tighter proposals on migration and asylum with the backing of the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

As with the French Socialists Merkel made it a moral argument, criticising Merz for corroborating with the right-wing AfD

Merkel’s intervention was praised by Saskia Esken, joint leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), the senior partner in the coalition government. She expressed her gratitude to Merkel for reminding Merz ‘of his political responsibility’.

Merz’s responsibility, like Francois Bayrou’s, is to the electorate, the majority of whom in Germany, as in France, want an end to mass immigration. A poll last September found that 73 per cent of Germans are in favour of increased border controls, and 71 per cent support deporting migrants at the country’s borders.

Immigration is the number one issue in this month’s general election, at which the AfD are expected to perform strongly. That is because of the irresponsible behaviour of Angela Merkel in opening Europe’s borders to more than one million refugees and migrants in 2015. They keep coming, and in the last ten years Germany has received 2.4 million asylum seekers, double the population of Munich. Some integrate, some don’t. Some work, some don’t.

The unemployment rate for Germans is 5 per cent; for non-citizens it’s 14.7 per cent. It is the same in France where the unemployment rate for immigrants is 11 per cent compared with 7 per cent for French citizens.

It is neither immoral nor irresponsible to say that Europe is being ‘submerged’ by mass immigration. It is borne out by the official statistics. The irresponsibility lies with those politicians who deny this reality and, worse, ignore the will of the electorate.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/europe-is-feeling-the-strain-of-mass-immigration/

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Written by Gavin Mortimer

Gavin Mortimer is a British author who lives in Burgundy after many years in Paris. He writes about French politics, terrorism and sport.