To house a foreigner in a so-called irregular situation—otherwise known as an illegal migrant—in an administrative detention facility (CRA) for one night, the French state pays nearly €700 each day, newly released information from France’s Cour de Comptes (Court of Auditors) has revealed.
The Court of Auditors, the French government’s supreme audit institution whose primary mandate is to verify the proper handling of state funds, published a report which revealed that the French state pays an average of €690 per day to house an illegal immigrant in an administrative detention facility (CRA), the news portal Boulevard Voltaire reports.
The information contained in the report was brought to light earlier this week, on Wednesday, October 26th, in the National Assembly’s law commission, following an inquiry from Timothée Houssin, a lawmaker for the national Right, anti-globalist party Rassemblement National.
Houssin’s inquiry was answered by Dominique Simonnot, Controller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty, who during the session noted that “it’s a figure that made [her] jump.”
According to Simonnot, the staggering per day cost takes into consideration the operating and maintenance costs of the detention centers, the salaries of the police and gendarmes responsible for managing the CRAs, as well as the food and healthcare provided to illegal migrants.
The figure is consistently increasing as well, with a report from the Court of Auditors in May of 2020 estimating that for the year 2018 “each day of detention of in mainland Frances represented an expense of €622… up 30% from the year before.”
By comparison, the French state spends €953 per month, or €31 per day, on pensioners over the age of 65 who lack the resources to sustain themselves. Similarly, a secondary school student costs the state twenty-five times less per day than an illegal migrant sheltered in a CRA.
For the year 2022, the French state’s “immigration budget” stood at €1.9 billion, up from €1.84 the year before, according to a report from Le Figaro.
In 2019, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated that mass migration, when accounting for all factors, including healthcare, social welfare benefits, and healthcare, cost French taxpayers €10 billion.
