In the last two decades, the world has changed; it is about time people realized this and be made fully aware of this fact. In particular, the need to understand the consequences of the great expansion of individual freedom worldwide, and everything else that comes with it: the market economy and democracy. And what further stems from it: a large movement of people and things ahead of us.
One of the first signs of the market economy is the free movement of goods; thus ensuring also the free movement of services and capital. And tomorrow, these movements will increase significantly, to ensure the financing of the global economy, by the massive transfer of the savings of creditors to the borrowing of debtors.
One of the first signs of democracy is the free movement of people. By the way, dictatorships are recognized by the travel ban they impose on their citizens: the refusniks in the former Soviet Union, the boat people in Vietnam, the balseros in Cuba are known. Tomorrow, the movements of people will only increase, if, as seems likely, individual freedom continues to expand: the number of people who will want, or will have to live in a country other than where they were born, will rise from 200 million today to more than a billion in 30 years, without even taking into account those who will have to migrate for tragic reasons due to the effects of climate change.
These two freedoms feed on each other: democracy needs the market economy and vice versa. The free movement of goods and capital requires the free movement of people to be lasting. The requirement of buying cheap products elsewhere will not last unless those who produce them are allowed one day to come and work with those whose standard of living is well documented in all the media; therefore the free movement of goods will eventually result in a great movement of people.
These movements have already started. This can already be seen in borders throughout the world; and especially in Europe’s heartlands and at its gates. Not only given the number of Africans and Middle Easterners that flock there, but also because Europeans are the first to leave their country when they are unhappy there: thankfully, no one will place a travel ban on them.
So we must therefore be prepared to receive many more foreigners in Europe than in the past; it is inevitable, unless we close our borders to goods from elsewhere and question democracy. And that is all to the good: Europe needs more population, to rejuvenate, to work in trades that Europeans no longer want to engage in.
In particular, France is the result of hundreds of waves of immigration, starting with the people that names it. Today, the continuation of this immigration is there as elsewhere, the condition of the return to growth and employment.
For this not to constitute an unbearable shock, and not to bring about the refusal, with immigration, of the market economy and democracy, it is urgent, essential to consciously fix its limits, much higher than today, to dare to expel without some soul-searching those who would come without permission, and especially to rethink the integration policy. The problem is not the number of foreigners, but it is the number of those who are not integrated. Because we do not provide the means to enable them to become integrated, or because they do not want it.
That means imposing on all those who want to settle in France to comply with all applicable laws and local customs in place in the country, to speak and write French after a reasonable period of time, to know the history of France, to become familiar with it and raise their children in French. Finally, we must create the conditions for social mobility so that it gives all children living regularly in France the means to succeed in school and reach any social position they deserve through their own merit. In today’s France, this is not the case and we are very far from it.
This will require some ways and means. We would all, in this country, benefit from it. Here again, being altruistic would be a smart way to promote our own goals.