The year 2022 was a historic year for immigration in France. Never before had that country seen such an influx of both legal and illegal immigrants.

Last year, France — a country of 68 million inhabitants — handed out over 320,000 first-time residence permits to foreigners, which represents a 17 percent increase over the previous year. Even in 2019, the last year before the Covid pandemic, the number of first-time residence permits was “just” over 277,000.

By way of comparison, the number of such permits was a little more than 170,000 in 2007, when France’s last center-right president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected, and it oscillated in the 193,000-197,000 range throughout his five-year tenure.

However, after François Hollande from the overtly pro-immigration Socialist Party was elected in 2012, the numbers started rising fast to reach over 247,000 in the last year of his presidency, 2017.

His former special counselor for European affairs, then economy minister, who replaced him in the Élysée Palace, Emmanuel Macron, has since then kept increasing legal immigration — except for the first “Covid year” of 2020 — to reach 320,330 initial residence permits in 2022.

https://rmx.news/france/immigration-hits-new-records-in-macrons-france-and-that-may-be-by-design/