A survey has revealed that 77 per cent of the French public believes that the government under President Emmanuel Macron is failing to control immigration, including a majority of Macron’s own voters.
The survey, conducted by the CSA institute and published on Wednesday, suggests that 77 per cent of French think the government has failed to control immigration, CNews reports.
When broken down by political affiliation, even a majority of those who Macron’s party Renaissance, formerly La République En Marche!, say that his government has failed on the issue, at 61 per cent,
Among right-wing parties the Republicans, National Rally, and Reconquest, 92 to 100 per cent say the government has not controlled immigration.
The poll comes after France allowed the migrant taxi NGO ship Ocean Viking to dock in the city of Toulon, after the Italian government led by anti-mass migration national conservative Giorgia Meloni refused port access.
Earlier this week, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin announced that several of the migrants who had arrived on the ship had already been deported to Mali — meaning they were obviously not legitimate refugees — but slammed the Italian government for not allowing the ship to dock in Italy regardless.
“It’s not the executive who welcomed the boat, it’s our humanity. I am very surprised by deputies who call themselves national or patriotic that you attack the government rather than your Italian friends, and that finally, you are very internationalist,” Darmanin said this week, attempting to undermine French conservatives who complained the Macron government should have taken the same line as Meloni.
Deportations have also been a topic of discussion in France in recent weeks, with French media noting that less than one in ten deportation orders were actually carried out in 2020 and the first half of 2021.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of deportations carried out was only slightly better, at 12 per cent in 2018 and 2019.
Interior Minister Darmanin has suggested getting tougher on those with deportation orders, including floating policies like putting illegals with a deportation order on the criminal wanted list and revoking their social benefits.