France Releases Latest Immigration Data as Parliament Debates Migration Policy

As of December 31 last year, 3,231,823 foreigners were counted on French territory. This figure corresponds to the number of valid residence permits on that date.

Based on the data received from the ministry, L’Obs reports that 90,074 residence permits were issued for "family reasons", while the number of students was estimated at 83,082 in 2018. As for immigrants for "humanitarian" reasons, they number 33,981, while economic migrants number 33,502.

According to these data, the first asylum seekers are Afghans. They are 10,370 to have filed an asylum application, followed by Albanians and Georgians. The admission rate for this type of file is 26.6%, down from 2017 (27.2%).

As of December 31, 2018, 278,765 people "under the protection" of Ofpra were counted. Among them, 225,544 refugees, 51,728 benefited from "subsidiary protection" entitling them to a one-year renewable residence permit, and 1,493 were recognized as stateless. In total, 46,838 protections were issued in 2018.