On The French Immigration Issue

France has long been a country of immigration, and is likely to remain so. It has gone though four waves of immigration and has a large population of immigrants, including 4 million to 5 million Muslims. More than one-third of the immigrants have taken French citizenship. Even if the xenophobic campaigns in reaction to immigration occurred at all periods, the new comers eventually assimilated in the medium or the long term, and their demographic contribution to French society is positive -even essential-until the third quarter of the twentieth century. A third wave of immigration started in 1956, immediately after the World War, swelled rapidly and by 1976 the number of immigrants had reached 3.7 million (7.4% of the total population). Then the economic slump of the mid-1970 put an end to the growth of the legal immigration flows. For the first time the large population of immigrants has becoming a problem triggering strong political reactions. Of course, immigration has become heavily politicized and is an issue in elections. It has accordingly been seen as a danger to the civil peace, the unity of the country and the very existence of the French national community. To effectively solve the problem, it needs the cooperation of the French government, the European Community and the immigration source country. This paper started from the French immigration history illustrated how dose France become an immigration country from a nation-state. The second chapter explains the problems caused by the immigrants, including the economic problem, cultural problem and the political problem. The third chapter and bring forward the solution to the French immigration problems examines the emergence of a cross-nationalEuropean response to immigration, as European Union has become more concerned abouttheir common external frontier. The paper concludes that in the future immigration toFrance is likely to increase, both as a result of the demand for labor, and because of lowbirth rates in France. And immigrating is becoming more and more common with frequentmoving of the capital. It's more and more difficult for France to control the immigrants toFrance.