French Left Silences Debate on Immigration

In Europe, we have a paradox: The more people view immigration as a major issue, the less they feel free to talk about it. In October 2009, France’s minister of immigration proposed a “debate on national identity.” It was a very strange proposal. Since when does the government decide which debates should take place and when?

But there is more to it. The debate on “national identity” was really a debate on immigration, and more specifically the Islamic part of it – an invitation by the government to the people to comment on what immigration policy should look like. Somewhere between 10 – 20% of the people living in France are recent immigrants, or children born to immigrant parents. Many of them have been completely assimilated to French society and culture. But others have not, and this unassimilated minority causes great unease in France.

Right after the Swiss adopted a ban on minarets by referendum in November 2009, polls in France indicated that a majority of the French would have voted the same way. Many if not most French seem averse to further immigration from Muslim countries.

And some of them expressed these views during the so-called debate. The immigration ministry launched a website where anyone could post about his own conception of French national identity. Then there were meetings organized in a préfecture’s headquarters where anyone could come and speak. Most of those who participated simply listed what they liked about France. That missed the point of the exercise. But some went further – and discussed what they disliked about Islam in terms too candid for French public decision.

As surrealistic as it can be to see the government declaring a public debate open, it was much weirder to read a petition titled “Stop this Debate, Mr. President” launched in December and signed by a few dozen well-known academics and intellectuals. That quickly became the dominant point of view among intellectuals, the media and the opposition. Finally, in January, President Sarkozy proposed a few measures such as the singing of the Marseillaise once a year in every school and the government essentially stopped all discussion of the subject. In plain words, the debate on national identity was essentially a political gesture meant to mobilize the conservative electorate before the coming regional elections, and it failed.

The sad thing is that academics, even left-wing intellectuals, could have had a lot of interesting things to say on the subject, rather than asking the government to make people stop debating.

For instance, they could have given their thoughts on the very notion of “national identity”, French or otherwise. It would be interesting to clarify the difference between feeling French – for instance – and being French from a legal point of view. If you have some idea of what makes someone feel French, that might prove useful if France is to assimilate the millions of immigrants who settled here during the last thirty years. But the paranoid left would not have any of it.

So here we are, with a failed political tactic on the part of Sarkozy and a refusal from the left to even discuss a topic that has become a concern for the French public. The French are not racist, but many are worried. The intellectual left and the media are afraid of what they might have to say, so they do what they can to keep them from saying anything. In this case, they seem to have succeeded. But since you can’t solve a problem by preventing people from talking about it, this will only be temporary.