The French Interior Ministry is beginning to feel an administrative strain as a large number of asylum seekers continue to flock to the country.
The French government has seen 10,000 applications filed by Albanians and Georgian nationals alone so far this year, an 80 per cent increase for Georgian asylum seekers compared to the same period last year, newspaper Le Figaro reports.
While both Albania and Georgia are considered safe countries for deportation, the influx is putting the asylum bureaucracy under even more strain as asylum seekers with little chance of gaining refugee status clog the system.
France has, for the past two years, had agreements in place with the governments of both countries to prevent the flow of bogus asylum seekers, and while Albanian migrants have decreased by 23 per cent, according to interior minister Christophe Castaner, the issue still remains.
Last year, France saw a record number of asylum claims, well over 120,000, which followed the previous record-breaking year. Of those who came to France last year, less than half were actually granted refugee status.
The French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) also noted that there was a surge of Afghan migrants in 2018, with the number of Afghan applications for asylum up 55 per cent compared to the year before.
One prefect told Le Figaro that not only does France see migrants coming from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but also from Germany and Belgium where rejected migrants are sent back to France.
In total, around 330,000 “irregular” migrants are covered by state medical aid but not all illegals receive benefits, putting the actual number of illegals living in France into question.
In the Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis alone, some have estimated there could be as many as 400,000 illegal migrants, a figure that would make illegals up to 20 per cent of the population of the area.
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