Marine Le Pen on Immigration

Marine Le Pen delivered a speech at a political convention held in Nice on September 10 and 11. The convention provided a podium for the leaders of the Front National, though the spotlight was on her and her goals for the party. These goals are well-known, but need to be repeated and strengthened with unambiguous language. While the speech, which you can view on two RuTube videos at the FN website, is too long to translate in its entirety, I am presenting here those excerpts on immigration, since it is the topic of highest priority:

(…) Is it in the interests of France to impose on our country massive immigration?

From the evidence, No! Since almost five million of our compatriots are unemployed, what interest can there be in allowing 203,000 more legal immigrants in every year, 5% of whom have a work contract, while the others are the burden of the taxpayers? This is 78% more than under Lionel Jospin in 2000…

There can be only one objective in this, obviously to lower salaries and to try to grab a few competitive points on the backs of the taxpayers in a mad auction with low-bidding emerging countries.

Note: She avoids the issue of population substitution as a motive behind immigration preferring to use economic expediency.

The labor market, as its name indicates, is a market that evolves in terms of supply and demand. You don't have to be an economist to understand that in times of massive unemployment, the more demand there is for jobs, the lower the salaries.

Any more than you would have to graduate from business school to realize that if we bring in every year the equivalent of the population of Rennes, while 1.2 million households are awaiting subsidized housing, we will create a penury of housing and a terrifying increase in rents (already +24% in ten years, according to a recent study).

She then notes that Yves-Marie Laulan, the former president of the economic committee of NATO estimates the yearly cost of immigration at 70 billion. If this refers just to France (in euros) it is astronomical.

You need only have eyes to see that this massive arrival, in a short time, 20 or 30 years, of women and men, the great majority of whom have a culture very different from our own, renders all assimilation unworkable and even impossible. France is thus confronted by a multiculturalism that is wreaking havoc with her laws, her mores, her traditions, in short the values of her civilization and her identity. Multi-cultural societies always become multi-conflictual societies.

And so I solemnly say here that it is in France's interest to stop all immigration and even to encourage the turning back of the flood.

We have ample means to train welders, factory workers, waiters, cooks, doctors and engineers.

We do not need immigrants as workers because there isn't any work and because in this difficult period the little that does exist should go first to our own!

As for the cynical argument that says we should bring in immigrants for jobs that the French refuse to do, we must silence it.

(…)

We must help the French!

In this respect you will agree that there is scant difference between the UMP and the PS:

- 114,000 legal immigrants under Jospin en 2000, 203,000 under Sarkozy in 2010, 78% more immigration than the Socialists. He did a good job!

- The Socialists dreamed of banning the deportation of criminal aliens. Sarkozy did it!

- The Left hoped to weaken laïcité and foster any and all ethnic demands. The Right did it!

- With the French Council on the Muslim Religion (CFCM) in the hands of fundamentalists, street prayers on the increase - a problem I have dealt with for months - long-term leases or guaranteed loans for the construction of places of worship, the general spread of halal foods, Islamic finance implemented by Madame Lagarde…

Everything, I mean everything, even the concert given by SOS Racism on July 14 at place de la Concorde as in the good old days of François Mitterand!

Amnesty for illegals was authorized once a year by the Socialists. Today there is massive amnesty on a daily basis - 20,000 according to Le Monde in 2010!

There is only one question. Did the French people elect Sarkozy for this? At least with the Socialists, we know where we're going. As far as being the worst is concerned, they never disappoint us. But in this domain as in many others, it is not too late to act and to restore some order to our country.

We must apply simple but firm rules to dissuade migration:

- Add a Constitutional amendment that bans all communitarianism, in order to stop definitively all (ethnic and religious) demands and to preserve our culture, our identity and the values of our Republic;

- Send out clear and comprehensible signals to everyone;

- Laïcité is not negotiable and each one must bend to the laws of the host country;

- Nationality is not an administrative situation, it is a privilege, a commitment, a feeling of pride, a will, and the nation has the right to be demanding in its choices;

- Amnesty for illegals is a sign of incompetence.

Those who come to our territory or who remain here illegally cannot, must not, be legalized. Either they are documented, or they are not, and in this case, they must not be given a residency visa.

Who would allow someone to keep an object that was fraudulently acquired?

Who would allow a business executive to keep money that he stole from his own business? Legalizing undocumented aliens incites to violate the laws and is even a reward. It is inadmissible in a State governed by Rule of Law...

Moreover, it is an incredible injustice to those foreigners who made the effort to apply for legal authorizations and to fulfill the conditions required to obtain them.

If I am elected, I will have a bill passed to abolish the law authorizing amnesty for illegals.

Amnesty for illegals will disappear pure and simple from our law.

(…)