A French Immigration Moratorium Won’t Be Enough. Only Remigration Works!

France’s Arch of Triumph at sunset. Courtesy of Constant Loubier on Unsplash.

Director’s Note: “Now is not the time for mourning. Now is the time for war.”

These are the words of a mother demanding justice for her 17-year-old son. Louis, a French teen, was murdered with “unspeakable” violence by men of Tunisian or North African ethnic origin.

Mainstream media outlets present the goalpost for protest as whether or not there is a “racial motive.” I would not be surprised if there was as in this case, or this one, or this one.

But here is what matters:

1. All migrant crime is preventable crime. The state never had to let them in.

2. Jordan Bardella of the National Party called the violence “unimaginable.” This level of cruelty is rare for our countries. Our boys and girls don’t play the knockout game or behead people on the street.

I’ve said this many times before: I agree and amplify Professor David Betz’s analysis that Civil War has come to the West. But it doesn’t have to be this way. A responsible state would immediately implement a policy of remigration. It must do so before it’s too late.

***

A French Immigration Moratorium Won’t Be Enough. Only Remigration Works!

J.M. Bright

One cannot take a cursory survey of the West and ponder the current predicament of our family of nations without a profound sense of melancholy. Every nation West of Poland suffers from the disease of multiculturalism and the negative externalities of mass immigration. If I look to my South across the English Channel to France, that land of cathedrals and châteaux, of Cartesian clarity and Gallic might, I see the same situation I face here in England, or which I have witnessed on my travels to Sweden, Germany, The United States, and Australia. The French are being rapidly replaced by the masses of the third world and the poor of Eastern Europe. This reality is causing the same rise in nationalist sentiment in France as it is everywhere else in the West. It is the reason that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) is leading both first and second round polling for the 2027 French presidential election. Defenders of the status quo have taken notice and begun to panic in the face of the death of their liberal despotism.

As part of this panic, the current French Justice Minister, one Mr. Gérald Darmanin, has called for a three year moratorium on legal immigration to France. This would include limiting family reunification, asylum seekers, and employment-based immigration from outside of Europe. Darmanin put out this call for a moratorium in May of 2026, and while it does not appear the French government has moved to implement the minister’s proposal, it does illuminate the desperation of the European ruling class and the fact that an immigration moratorium will simply not be enough to rescue France or the West. Only remigration will.

This is not to nay-say immigration moratoriums! From a nationalist perspective, the perspective that holds dear the continuity of the native French people and broader Western heritage, such a measure is not merely prudent but essential. We cannot clean up the mess if the tap has not been shut and the flow ceased. Most importantly, these policy proposals are not born of rancor, but of a sober recognition that peoples, like families, have a right to maintain their character, their traditions, and their demographic integrity across the generations. Unchecked mass immigration from profoundly dissimilar civilisations is eroding the peace, prosperity, and stability of France and the West.

The figures from France’s own statistical agencies paint a portrait of quiet transformation. According to INSEE, the French national statistics institute, some 13.8% of France’s population in 2024 consisted of immigrants (foreign-born individuals). More tellingly, the composition of births reveals the pace of change. In recent data, only about 65.9% of newborns had two parents born in France, with 19% having two foreign-born parents and a further 15.2% had just one French parent. Net migration has become the primary driver of population growth, with natural increase (births minus deaths) stagnating or turning negative in many areas. In 2023, some 347,000 immigrants arrived, with Africa as the leading continent of origin at 45%. Earlier patterns showed a more balanced inflow from Europe, but non-European sources, particularly from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, now predominate. OECD and INSEE data confirm that France received around 294,000 long-term immigrants in 2022, contributing significantly to overall numbers.

Fertility patterns compound the issue. Native French women hover near or below replacement level (around 1.8 or lower in recent estimates for the core population), while immigrant women, particularly from higher-fertility regions, maintain elevated rates, at least in the first generation. Though second-generation fertility converges somewhat, the sheer volume of inflows ensures a sustained demographic shift. As one analysis notes, more than 30% of births now involve at least one parent born outside the EU.

Such trends are not unique to France. Across the West, from the United Kingdom to Sweden, similar patterns of demographic replacement unfold, driven by sub-replacement fertility among natives (typically 1.3–1.8) and high immigration. The result is a gradual but inexorable alteration of the human stock that built these societies their laws, mores, artistic genius, and social trust.

With these immigration figures numbers in mind, it comes as no surprise that 12% of the French population are second-generation immigrants. Another 10% are third-generation immigrants born to the children of the original immigrant generation to the country. The second generation of immigrants represents roughly 8 million individuals, while the third generation is composed of roughly 4.8 million people, according to INSEE.

Of these 12.8 million second-generation immigrants and beyond, roughly 4.78 million are known to be non-European, according to the Institut national d’études démographiques (INED).

Overall, White Papers estimates that 70-72% of the French population are native French men and women while the remaining 30% are a mix of other Europeans and non-Europeans, none of whom have a concrete claim to the homeland of the French. And while an immigration moratorium will certainly stem the tide of change, it will not reverse the replacement of the native French.

After all, for decades the proponents of open borders often spoke in abstractions: “diversity is our strength” or they have preached about the economic necessities of importing masses of alien individuals. By now, most in the West are recognizing that integration has faltered, particularly with inflows from culturally distant regions. High unemployment among certain immigrant groups, residential segregation, parallel societies, and periodic outbursts of unrest in the ‘banlieues’ speak to a failure of assimilation on a scale most people living outside multicultural areas can barely comprehend.

A moratorium on legal immigration, as proposed, with sensible exceptions for genuine refugees such as Ukrainians and perhaps intra-European movement within the bounds of shared civilisation, would afford breathing space to the beleaguered French, but it would not stop their replacement. France must have remigration.

According to White Papers’s own research on the topic, more than 4.3 million non-Western individuals in France could be removed from the country by simply refusing to renew their visas upon expiration. Along with these adult immigrants, a further 2.5-3 million non-French children (mostly Tunisians, Moroccans, and Algerians), would be expected to depart with them. After these steps the French would need to move onto denaturalisation under both their current legal structures and by expanding the grounds to do so.

France has an extremely broad set of regulations and laws which enable the Council of State to denaturalize those who:

1. Undermine the fundamental interest of France

2. Lie or commit fraud in the acquisition of their nationality

3. Interfere with the public administration of France and the individual freedoms of Frenchmen

4. Served in a foreign government’s public or armed services

These options give a nationalist French administration, should one arise in the coming years, ample room to begin denaturalizing those non-Europeans who pose a threat to the state and to begin deporting them back to their ancestral homelands.

These former citizens too would have to take their family members and underage children with them when they departed France after being denaturalized, once again radically reducing the non-White/non-European population of the country.

And of course the French must consider voluntary remigration: meaning, paying many millions of non-Western individuals who are unhappy with life in France, unwilling to integrate, but whom are addicted to its lavish benefits system to leave the country and establish new lives abroad in either their own homelands or third-party states willing to take them. White Papers’s own estimates show that as many as 4 million people in France would be tempted by a 75,000 Euro payment to leave the country and return to their own ancestral homes. (And this is more affordable than the current welfare drain.)

Of all Western countries, the French are perhaps the most philosophically and culturally ready for remigration behind only the Americans (who are already dabbling in the practice under the Trump administration). France must of course implement an immigration moratorium, but that is only one step in the process that inevitably leads to either remigration or the end of French civilization.

How to Support White Papers:

We keep our policy analysis free because we’re dedicated to the independence and prosperity of our people. But we rely on our paid subscribers to grow and thrive!

Consider giving to our mission using one of the methods below.

Credit Card: whitepaperspolicy.org/donate

Zelle: whitepapersinstitute@protonmail.com

Snail Mail: White Papers Policy, PO Box 192, Hancock, MD 21750

Stay in touch at info@whitepaperspolicy.org!