From the New York Times:

Macron Opens Year Pulling No Punches With Journalists, or Anyone

By ADAM NOSSITER JAN. 5, 2018

Similarly, [French Boy Wonder President Macron’s] sharp-elbowed immigration policy has marked a break with the looser attitude of his Socialist predecessor. He is outflanking both the far-right’s National Front and the conventional right, both of whom make immigration their war cry. Mr. Macron is depriving them of the issue.

He set the tough tone to African students themselves, in a November address to those at Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, who were demanding easier access to France.

“I can’t tell my middle classes who work, who pay taxes, that it’s great, we’re going to welcome everybody into the country,” Mr. Macron said. “That’s just ridiculous. Who’s going to pay for that? You’ll just fuel racism and xenophobia. That doesn’t exist, totally open frontiers, that just doesn’t work.”

Accordingly, forced expulsions of those denied asylum were up more than 13 percent last year, hovering around 15,000, compared with the previous year. The interior minister has asked prefects all over France to step up such expulsions.

“We can’t take in everybody,” Mr. Macron said in his New Year’s Eve speech. “There must be rules. It’s indispensable that we check the identities of everyone, and when someone arrives in our country who is not eligible for asylum and has no chance of getting French citizenship, we can’t accept that they stay for months, years, in an irregular situation good for neither them nor the country.”