Researchers warn against limiting immigration as vote looms

Leading voices in academia and the start-up community are warning of the risk posed to international collaboration, researcher mobility and evidence-based policy-making in France if Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) comes to power in the upcoming election, writes Martin Greenacre for Science|Business.

RN is leading the polls ahead of voting on 30 June and 7 July, and is promising to place stricter controls on both illegal and legal immigration if it wins. That could have a major impact on science in a country where 42% of PhD students come from abroad, according to figures from Campus France.

“The scientific community in France is very worried,” Alain Fischer, president of the Académie des Sciences, a scientific body founded in 1666, told Science|Business. He argues that pressure from the far-right has already been felt, with the government proposing earlier this year to require international students to pay a deposit, a policy which was later thrown out by France’s Constitutional Council.
Full report on the Science|Business site