2023-11-25 13:58:24
France will need immigration to reindustrialize, Minister of Industry Roland Lescure stressed on Saturday, estimating around 100,000 to 200,000 the number of foreign talents needed in the next ten years.
“We will undoubtedly have to resort to immigration (…)”, he said on Franceinfo while the Law Commission of the National Assembly will take up the highly controversial text on Immigration on Monday , already examined in the Senate. Dozens of other countries, Germany or Canada for example, are already embarking on this path, noted the Minister of Industry.
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“We must pull out all the stops so that the French nation is once once more an industrial, ecological and sovereign nation,” he argued, insisting on the need to “put all the effort into training,” “to seek out young people in the suburbs” where unemployment remains much higher than the national average but also to improve the employment rate of seniors.
“I did not say that it was necessary to open wide the floodgates of economic immigration,” he tempered, while the question of regularizing undocumented workers in professions in tension is fiercely debated at the Parliament
But, detailed Mr. Lescure, “if we manage to train 800 to 900,000 young and old people in the industry in the next ten years, frankly, it will be exceptional” and “there will still be a shortage of 100,000 to 200,000 (workers) which we will undoubtedly have to look elsewhere.”
“Win-win immigration exists”
“It’s not the tsunami,” he insisted, inviting “a somewhat calmer vision of the subject” and to move away from the “somewhat caricatured” debate on immigration in France. “We need to be firmer and more effective (on irregular immigration),” he said, but there is also, he continued, “a more reasoned immigration, which helps us , win-win exists”.
According to the minister, around 1.3 million jobs are to be filled in the industry in the next ten years due to retirements (800,000 to 900,000) and new sites planned.
He welcomed the “Talent Passport” system which makes it possible to issue residence permits to foreign engineers or researchers. But according to him, other qualifications are currently lacking in French industry, such as welders or metalworkers.
(With AFP)
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