Americans have elected as their president a man, Donald Trump, who claimed during his debate with Kamala Harris on September 10 that Haitian immigrants eat dogs and cats. Could the French bring to power one of their political leaders – far-right Rassemblement National head Jordan Bardella – who has assured that immigrants come to France to get otoplasties paid for by the taxpayer? If immigration is fertile ground for fake news and half-truths, it's because the subject has become an electorally powerful emotional catch-all and the medium for a multitude of messages designed primarily to respond to social frustration and identity anxiety by scapegoating foreigners. It doesn't matter if the rhetoric has little to do with the reality of migratory phenomena or the reality experienced by migrants.
The only French healthcare program available to undocumented migrants, "state medical aid" (AME), provides limited free medical treatment, including said type of ear surgeries. According to France Inter, such procedures were performed on five patients in 2023 for medical rather than cosmetic reasons, at a total cost of €11,660 from the AME's budget of €1.1 billion. Before being picked up by Bardella, the story of immigrants' ear surgeries had appeared on France's version Fox News – the media belonging to the billionaire Vincent Bolloré. Host Cyril Hanouna and several contributors had devoted considerable airtime to it, feeding Bardella's claims that "our social model" acts as a "suction pump" for immigration.
This seemingly preposterous story about auricula is symptomatic of the shift in the public debate on immigration. Neither the men and women who leave their countries for a better future nor the realities of global immigration flows are at the center of the debate. Who can truly believe that people who are prepared to die at sea with their children, suffer the violence of smugglers and transit countries and take on jobs that the French don't want, are coming for cosmetic enhancements? Who can believe that people massively choose to come to France because our country has one of the most generous health systems in Europe (which, by the way, is true)?
Apparently, many voters are receptive to this narrative as long as "immigration" is presented as an abstract, dehumanized threat that channels social anger and fears of decline. Yet, a widely well-received report submitted to the government a year ago on the subject recommended a tightening of the conditions of access to AME while underlining the program's"usefulness" in terms of public health and challenging the idea that it attracts immigrants.
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