Sarkozy: Too Many Foreigners In France

Last Updated 01:57 07/03/2012
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said there are too many foreigners in France and has pledged to cut the number of new arrivals in half.
As the country's presidential election campaign gathers pace, Mr Sarkozy insisted France's attempts to integrate foreign arrivals into its culture and society had become paralysed.

"Our system of integration is working more and more badly, because we have too many foreigners on our territory and we can no longer manage to find them accommodation, a job, a school," he said in a television debate.

Mr Sarkozy has been accused of moving to the right in the run up to the presidential election in order to recruit voters tempted by anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen.

He said that while immigration could remain "a boon" for France in many areas, it must be controlled more tightly through tougher residency qualifications for newcomers.

"Over the five-year term I think that to restart the process of integration in good conditions, we must divide by two the number of people we welcome, that's to say to pass from 180,000 per year to 100,000," he said.

Mr Sarkozy also announced new plans to limit some welfare benefit payments currently available to immigrant workers to those who have enjoyed residency for 10 years and have worked for five of those.

France will vote in the first round of a presidential election on April 22, followed by a second-round run-off on May 6.

All recent opinion polls forecast that Francois Hollande will emerge victorious.