France has maxed out on migrants. It’s a message that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party has been pushing for years, but it’s one now endorsed by the government’s Justice Minister. In an interview with a newspaper at the weekend, Gérald Darmanin declared that the Republic has ‘reached the limits of our capacities for integration and assimilation’.

Darmanin believes that a three-year suspension of legal immigration is the answer, and in particular he wants a crackdown on the policy of family reunification. Introduced in 1976, the policy allowed migrants – mainly from North Africa – who came to France to work to also bring their family. ‘We must put an end to immigration as it exists today,’ said Darmanin.

A report last week estimated that there are more than a million illegal immigrants in France, many of whom have arrived from central Africa and war-torn countries of the Middle East. But it is legal immigration that has most unsettled the French this century.

Last year, more than 380,000 non-European nationals received their first residence permit in France, an increase of 40,000 on 2024. The figures........

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