The High Court victory of Epping Forest District Council has made news in France. The decision to temporarily block migrants from being housed in The Bell Hotel was covered by newspapers such as Le Monde and Le Figaro.<\/p>\n
The latter provided some context to the growing tension in England, noting that the migrants in Epping are just a few of the estimated 32,000 migrants housed in hotels \u2018at the expense of the British taxpayer.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nIn the years since most journalists have shied away from reporting on the ongoing practice of housing migrants in hotels<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Earlier this month the cover story of a weekly current affairs magazine in France, JDD News, was devoted to the growing disquiet of Europe\u2019s silent majority at mass immigration. The article was inspired by the protests in Epping but also namechecked the anti-migrant demonstrations in Ireland, Poland and Spain. \u2018Across Europe, citizens are taking matters into their own hands in the face of immigration they consider uncontrolled and insecurity that is no longer a fantasy,\u2019 it explained.<\/p>\n
One country is an exception to the rule. There have been no mass protests in France, which one might consider surprising given the country\u2019s reputation for street demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Since Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017 France has undergone record levels of legal and illegal immigration. It\u2019s estimated that there around 900,000 illegal immigrants in France while in 2024 a record 2.8 million visas were issued, a 16.8 per cent hike on the previous year. The vast majority of arrivals come from four countries: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey.<\/p>\n
As in Britain, accommodating this vast number of newcomers is a challenge, and one that the mainstream media is reluctant to talk about. It wasn\u2019t always the case. In October 2015 the left-wing Liberation reported that \u2018around 35,000 people are accommodated each night in 538 hotels in the capital\u2019. Most were migrants and refugees, some of the one million plus people who had flooded into Europe since Angela Merkel opened the continent\u2019s borders that summer. The head of Paris\u2019s social services told the newspaper that \u2018we have reached saturation point in the budget hotel market.\u2019<\/p>\n
As a result of this saturation, tented migrant camps began appearing in Paris and these captured the attention of sympathetic journalists. The fallacy took hold that migrants and asylum seekers in France were treated far more inhumanely than those in Great Britain.<\/p>\n
In reality, France pioneered the practice of housing migrants in hotels. In 2013 it was reported<\/a> that 900 migrants were being put up in a Strasbourg hotel; four years later, at the height of Europe\u2019s migrant crisis, the government of France purchased 62 hotels belonging to a budget chain in order to transform them into emergency accommodation.<\/p>\n
The news was seized on by Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally party, prompting an angry backlash from most of the mainstream media. They pointed out that only 38 of the 62 hotels would house migrants; the rest were for France\u2019s homeless. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In the years since most journalists have shied away from reporting on the ongoing practice of housing migrants in hotels. Better to keep up the pretence of the tented camps than be seen providing ammunition for Le Pen.<\/p>\n
Local journalists sometimes break ranks. In 2023 it was reported<\/a> that a hotel in Ch\u00e2teauneuf-Grasse\u00a0in the Alpes-Maritimes had been transformed into migrant accommodation \u2013 at a cost of \u20ac2 million \u2013 to the fury of locals. They described a catalogue of daily disturbances. \u2018Our lives are miserable, and no one helps us,\u2019 said one woman whose housed backed on to the hotel. \u2018People are afraid to speak up, afraid of being labelled \u201cfascists\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n
The situation in Ch\u00e2teauneuf-Grasse\u00a0has got worse; earlier this year a squad of gendarmes were called<\/a> to quell a riot in the hotel. The mayor of the town, an independent, was only informed of the decision at the last minute and he warned that it might lead to a surge in support for Le Pen\u2019s party. It did. In the 2024 legislative election the National Rally came second (to the centre-right Republicans) with 43 per cent of the vote; in the 2022 election it had polled just 17 per cent. The big loser was Macron\u2019s Renaissance party, whose share of the vote fell from 49 per cent in 2022 to 21 per cent two years later.<\/p>\n
On the eve of the 2024 legislative election, Eric Ciotti, then the president of the Republicans, claimed that in the greater Paris region alone, \u2018every night, 52,000 hotel beds are rented for immigration\u2019. This, he said, cost the taxpayer around \u20ac1.2 billion.<\/p>\n
A decade earlier, in 2014, Ciotti had published a report in which he drew attention to the growing number of migrants arriving in France, stating that \u2018emergency accommodation expenses, particularly in the form of hotel stays, have consequently increased in a largely uncontrolled manner.\u2019<\/p>\n
In contrast Britain\u2019s illegal immigration crisis in 2014 was largely controlled. Back then there were no small boats and the few migrants that did cross the Channel did so in the back of lorries. On one occasion in September 2014, a mob of about 150 migrants stormed<\/a> a ferry terminal in Calais in an attempt to board a ship. They were repelled.<\/p>\n
It took the criminal gangs until 2018 to work out that the best way to enter Britain wasn\u2019t on a big boat but on a small one. Consequently, Britain\u2019s migrant crisis is now as uncontrolled as France\u2019s. The solution of Tory and Labour governments has been to copy Paris and house the migrants in hotels.<\/p>\n