So here we are fiddling the immigration figures

When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President in May 2007, he included in his government Brice Horetefeux at the head of the newly created Ministry of immigration, integration, national identity and co-development. The creation of this Ministry had been an election pledge and was designed to attract the far-right voters and butchly address the illegal immigration issue in France. There has rightly been a lot of fuss over this Ministry's policies and actions, and especially the "quota policy" instaured. In a nutshell, in 2008 the precise number of 28000 reconduites à la frontière (escorts to the border) were to be done. To do this, there has been a massive increase of random police checks for identity papers which has led to shocking news items : an old Chinese man arrested outside his granddaughter's school in full view of the children, several suicides by defenestration when people have thought the police were coming to get them in their homes, people with families (and children born in France) and who have been working here for decades suddenly back on the plane to Africa. People who do not have the magic papiers live in fear of being caught randomly in the streets (it is compulsory to carry ID on your person at all time) while they go to work or collect their kids from school.

This was all true over a year ago (see post here)

That's it for the background, so did Brice Hortefeux make it to 28000? Well yes he did, and more; the Minsitry and the Minister are congratulating themselves for having reached the figure of 29796 reconduites. Not only that, but they are applauding the fact that just over 10000 of these, so around a third, were voluntary.

This is where we pause. Not for subjective moral issues about repatriating almost 20000 people against their will but for accountancy reasons. This figure of 10000 voluntary repatriations needs to be a little more analysed. Indeed, it seems that a pretty hefty proportion of these (I'm not sure anyone has the real figure) are EU citizens. This does not concern carts of Brits departing from the Cote d'Azur, but mainly the Roms, the (semi) nomadic gypsies settled mainly in Romania and Bulgaria which, since January 2007 have been EU members.

This means the Roms can travel freely in the EU. "But!", one could argue, "why would they depart voluntarily, especially if, as it seems, all they do is come back?" Because, believe it or not, the French state gives a repatriation bonus to all those who leave voluntarily of around 300 euros and provide transport back. It would seem, that a vast amount of the "10000 voluntary repatriations" involve busloads of EU citizens being given 300 euros andcarted off, after which they simply return to France and do it again. There have been journalist investigations into this and human rights organisations are denouncing it, but that's about it, and certainly no sound from the government. Weird or what?