Far-right politician turns robots into an argument against immigration

🔍 WHY THIS STORY MATTERS
A French far-right politician is attaching automation to an explicitly anti-immigration programme, raising questions about what robotics can actually replace and how technology is being incorporated into Europe’s far-right politics.

KEY TAKEAWAYS...

● Éric Zemmour says AI and robotics could reduce France’s reliance on immigrant workers.

● His care home example also shows the difference between automating tasks and replacing whole jobs.

● “Remigration” links his robotics argument to a wider current within parts of Europe’s far-right.

T he leader of the French far-right party Reconquête, Éric Zemmour, is turning a debate about robots and artificial intelligence into an argument about immigration.

Zemmour says technological development could allow France to rely less on immigrant workers, explicitly presenting automation as an answer to claims that some industries cannot function without immigration.

At a political gathering on 13 September, the politician and polemist put the connection plainly.

“AI, my friends, coupled with robotics, will finally allow us to settle the issue of these so-called indispensable immigrants,” he told supporters.

He went on to invoke taxi drivers, delivery workers, builders, agricultural workers and employees in residential homes for elderly people, adding that Reconquête would “aimer les robots” (love robots).

Le Monde reported those remarks in the context of his promotion of “remigration” and characterised his broader programme as xenophobic. The underlying political positions are explicit: Zemmour wants substantially lower extra-European immigration and advocates removing categories of foreign residents from France.

The distinction matters because automation itself has no inherent immigration politics. A government can invest in robotics to increase productivity, respond to labour shortages, reduce dangerous work, help an ageing population or improve working conditions.

Zemmour gives that technology an additional purpose: reducing the economic demand for immigrants.

During his 17 September appearance on BFM-TV, he pointed to Asian economies as examples France should follow.

“It’s already happening in China, Japan, South Korea, there’s no reason we don’t do it,” he said. “We better invest quickly in this economic activity.”

The discussion became especially striking when it reached the Ehpads, France’s residential homes for dependent elderly people.