Macron Falters Reforming France’s Migration System, Risking an Economic Lifeline

Ania Nussbaum
·6 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- To serve beef-cheek bourguignon at his bistro near the Louvre, Alain Fontaine relies — like so many Parisian restaurateurs — on the labor of immigrant workers. After four years of form filling, he marked a victory over the country’s red tape this month when one of his chefs secured residency papers.

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Birahima, 22, arrived in France six years ago as a minor and studied cooking. On turning 18, the Malian chef fell into a legal bind: He wasn’t technically allowed to be employed, and yet having an employment contract helped his application for a permit to live in the country.

His path toward full work papers suffered a setback this week, however, when parliament rejected President Emmanuel Macron’s immigration bill after the government failed to win over enough conservative Republicains, whose support it needed. A cross-party group of lawmakers will now try to reach a compromise.

Macron, like other leaders in Europe, has been veering right on immigration to fend off attacks from nationalist parties, which have successfully used the topic as a springboard in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. His bill aims to toughen France’s stance, making it easier to expel migrants present illegally, but a pro-business provision to streamline bureaucracy for certain undocumented workers was opposed on the right.

At Fontaine’s Le Mesturet bistro, which serves up traditional dishes to well-heeled clients, around a quarter of the kitchen staff have an immigrant background, according to the owner. He puts the impact of losing a qualified cook like Birahima at €20,000 ($21,529) a year in terms of sales and lost reputation. He and his employer declined to disclose his last name because he doesn’t yet have a work permit.

The world’s top tourist destination relies on migrant workers to help keep its hotels and restaurants running, as well as its construction, care and transport sectors, and many are undocumented. The UMIH union representing the hotel industry has estimated at least 200,000 restaurant posts are open.

One in 10 jobs in France is filled by an immigrant, according to a 2021 government study, including more than one-in-five cooks, close to two-fifths of domestic staff and just over a quarter of low-skilled construction workers. The obstacles to hiring migrants are highlighted in a 15% unemployment rate that is more than double that of the population with no immigrant background.

“People don’t want to talk about immigration, but they rely on migrants when they go to the restaurant, when they visit their parents in retirement homes or to build their houses: It’s totally hypocritical,” Fontaine told Bloomberg. “There’s no way around it, we need more economic migrants.”

He points to hiring difficulties that have become more acute in physically demanding jobs since the Covid pandemic.

Macron’s solution is to enshrine in law a path to obtain legal status for those contributing to the euro-area’s second-biggest economy in sectors that struggle to recruit. That includes renewable one-year work permits for undocumented workers who can speak French.

Yet the issue of migration has laid bare his difficulties in forming coalitions to support legislation since losing his majority in parliament last year. Lawmakers from the far-left to the far-right voted to stop the bill from reaching the floor of the National Assembly for debate on Monday.

The president had given Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, seen as a potential successor in 2027, the task of building a majority. Yet two-thirds of the Republicains backed the so-called motion to dismiss.

The government has now asked for a cross-party committee of senators and assembly members, chosen in proportion to party representation, to try to thrash out a compromise that can be put to a vote in both houses. Yet the Senate is dominated by the right-wing Republicains, who favor much stricter conditions on residency permits for migrant workers, as well as limits on their access to healthcare and emergency housing.

Such divisions help the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen, whose popularity is soaring in opinion polls ahead of June’s European Parliament elections.

“We protected the French people from a pro-immigration law that envisaged welcoming more and more immigrants,” she said on social media platform X. “It was out of the question.”

Her party called on Macron to dissolve parliament and hold new elections. Government spokesman Olivier Veran ruled this out on LCI TV on Wednesday. He also dismissed the idea of resorting to a constitutional tool to push through the bill without a vote that Macron used for his unpopular pension reform earlier this year.

The recent successes of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders and the Alternative for Germany show how more voters are being drawn to nationalist, identitarian policies, while traditional parties on the right are struggling to remain relevant on immigration issues.

European Union leaders will again discuss immigration during a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, with countries like Italy pushing for solidarity in sharing the burden of accommodating the high number of people who have crossed the Mediterranean this year.

Philippe Aghion, an economist who advised Macron on his program for his first presidential run, said France can learn lessons from other countries with systems for selecting who can come to work.

“Just look outside, there aren’t enough Paris metro drivers, no one wants to do this job, it’s obvious there are labor shortages,” he said. “We must be able to choose our migrants: If you work, if you pay your taxes, you get a residency permit.”

Business lobby Medef, for its part, said the priority is to bring 2 million unemployed people in France into work, adding that it’s up to politicians not companies to choose how many immigrants the country accepts.

Michelin-starred chef Thierry Marx, who heads the Madame Brasserie restaurant on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, warned recently that the political debate has become emotional and confrontational, saying this won’t help solve France’s staffing difficulties.

“When we see the number of people retiring, it’s complex to replace them, today we have a demographic problem,” Marx, who is president of the UMIH union, told France Info radio last month. “We don’t recruit people because they’re migrants or don’t have documents, we recruit solutions to fill in jobs.”

--With assistance from Gina Turner and Julien Ponthus.

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