What is the contribution, or the possible cost, of immigration to France? Several members of the Economic Analysis Council (CAE), a research organization attached to Matignon, looked into this sensitive matter on Tuesday, with the publication of several notes. “The public debate on immigration is dominated by questions of identity and security (…) The real issues of economic immigration, those of long-term growth, are never discussed”, regret the authors, Emmanuelle Auriol and Hillel Rapoport.
In addition to developing a whole series of recommendations (see box at the end of the article) to attract qualified workers, the CAE is working to dismantle certain received ideas on immigration, in the light of the available work. 20 minutes has compiled the four most striking elements for you.
Misconception n ° 1: “Welcoming refugees represents a considerable cost for public finances”
In France, refugees represent around 550,000 people (including 118,000 asylum applications in progress), or 0.8% of the total population. For the ACE, “the host countries must, as a first step, provide aid and material support for the installation [des réfugiés], which represents a cost ”. According to an IMF study dated 2016, this cost of asylum seekers amounted to one billion euros per year in France (i.e. 0.05% of GDP). The CAE report nevertheless specifies that “these public expenditures are not net losses from an economic point of view”.
Indeed, “the assistance provided to refugees, whether monetary or directly in the form of the provision of goods and services, translates into an immediate increase in national consumption in the form of housing, food and / or services. Clearly, this aid is akin to a plan to revive the economy through consumption ”. The ACE is based on a 2018 study which studied the impact of asylum seekers on European economies between 1985 and 2015. It shows that their weight – the costs, therefore – for public finances is negligible in the short term . In the long run, the integration of refugees into the labor market is even beneficial for the economy as a whole, since they pay taxes and contributions “which exceed [nt] quickly the initial public cost of reception ”.
Misconception n ° 2: “Immigrants take work from the French”
According to the CAE, which is based on a 2015 study *, “immigration [en France] has a positive effect on both the wages and employment of natives with the same level of qualification ”. Other studies conducted in the United States provide a qualification, noting that the influx of immigrants can temporarily cause unemployment to rise among the least skilled workers, even if this effect disappears in the long term.
This negative effect is further offset by other factors. “The hiring of qualified foreign workers makes it possible to alleviate tensions on the labor market without penalizing native workers”, notes the CAE. In these difficult jobs, the arrival of immigrants has not led to a drop in the average salary of French workers. “Immigration as a whole has a low impact on the labor market in the short term,” note the authors.
Misconception n ° 3: “France is too generous with asylum seekers and / or refugees”
For the CAE, the problem must be reversed. Indeed, “deteriorated reception conditions weigh heavily and durably on the economic and social trajectories of refugees, causing a loss for the host economy as a whole”. In other words, the less quickly refugees enter the labor market, the less the benefits for society.
However, in France, asylum seekers are prohibited from working during the first six months of their arrival on the territory. In addition, “the length and uncertainty of the asylum application procedure have deleterious and persistent effects on the economic integration of arrivals”, explain the authors. According to the latter, countries therefore have every interest in promoting the rapid reception and integration of refugees in several dimensions (employment, language skills, social relations).
Misconception n ° 4: “Overall, immigration is a burden for the French economy”
“Immigration does not widen public deficits, answers the CAE. Depending on the country and the year, the net contribution of immigrants to public finances is between + 0.5% and – 0.5% of GDP ”. Beyond this purely accounting aspect, the note insists on the fact that skilled immigrants are often better able to set up businesses and innovate: in the United States, “although immigrants are only 13% in the population, they represent 26% of entrepreneurs ”.
Nevertheless, France is experiencing a somewhat different situation: “low-skilled immigration, little diversified and geographically concentrated like ours feeds the perception biases of public opinion”, recognize the authors, for whom it is therefore essential to attract foreign talents of all origins (see box below).
Finally, the ACE notes that “irregular immigration (…) is poorly tolerated by public opinion. One way to discourage it is to limit the benefits. This presupposes stepping up random checks in companies ”. However, at present, these controls “represent less than 10% of controls in the fight against illegal work (…) This is insufficient to discourage employers from using workers in an irregular situation”.
* Ortega J. and G Verdugo (2015): “The Impact of Immigration on the French Labor Market: Why so Different? ”, Labor Economics, vol. 29.