France’s President Emmanuel Macron has echoed TD Noel Grealish’s comments in relation to economic migrants posing as asylum seekers saying the country needs to drop its “bourgeois” stance towards immigration.
Last week at a public meeting in Oughterard Co. Galway the independent TD said that said that the asylum seekers who would potentially be housed at the Connemara Hotel would be African economic migrants not Syrian refugees.
Now French President Macron is echoing these remarks saying that if EU states do not impose more stringent controls on who is granted asylum the rise of right-wing populism across the continent will continue and intensify.
In recent months there has been a sharp increase in the number of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece from Turkey prompting fears of a renewed migrant crisis facing the continent.
The last round of the migrant crisis led to the rise in popularity of nationalist parties amongst the working and middle classes across the EU, with the exception of Ireland, where the establishment parties still enjoy the vast bulk of support.
Speaking to lawmakers from his ruling party, La République en Marche, the French president said, “The question is whether we want to be a bourgeois party or not. The bourgeoisie doesn’t have a problem with [immigration]. They never come across it. The working classes live with it.” He added:
“The left has not wanted to look at this problem for decades. The working classes have therefore moved to the far right.”
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