Nicolas Sarkozy's drop-by-drop regularisation policy

François Héran, a sociologist and demographer, speaks to Catherine Coroller about the decision by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to grant residency papers to 30 % of the 20,000 illegal immigrants who have filed requests. "Six thousand people out of a [French] population of 60 million is 1/10,000th, or 0.01 %, and 20,000 is 0.03 %. For a statistician, this is next to nothing. ... But the government fears an uncontrollable rush of illegal immigrants. This is difficult to prove, just as it is hard to prove the opposite metaphor - that closing the borders traps immigrants by dissuading them from returning home. Little research exists on the subject: data is lacking and too many parameters move at the same time. People talk about the surge in migration in the wake of the 1997 granting of residency papers, but it remains well below the level seen in Europe."

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