A confidential report by a senior French immigration official has warned that Afghan migration to France is posing deep and growing challenges to the country’s ability to integrate newcomers, raising serious concerns over cultural incompatibility, education deficits, and a disturbing overrepresentation in criminal activity.
The note, written by Didier Leschi, head of the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII), was published exclusively by Le Point, and exposes the social cost of mass immigration from the Middle Eastern country over the past decade.
Afghans now make up one of the 10 largest foreign nationalities with residence permits in France. More than 100,000 Afghans live in the country today, with their arrival dating back to the first waves in 2015, well before the Taliban returned to power in Kabul. “The subject is not so much the number of Afghans welcomed as the speed with which people who are very far from us culturally and linguistically have arrived, and which reveals the limits of our reception model,” Leschi wrote.
The report states that many of the Afghans coming to France are not fleeing political persecution by the Taliban but are part of a broader movement of economic migration. “We welcome people who were not necessarily hostile to the Taliban, but who have fled economic difficulties,” Leschi noted, highlighting that per capita GDP in Afghanistan is 100 times lower than in the EU. He added that, as countries like Iran and Pakistan continue to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghans, Europe has become the next destination, and within Europe, France is among the most generous. In 2024, nearly 80 percent of Afghan asylum applicants were granted protection in France, compared to just 40 percent in Sweden.
One of the most concerning findings in the report is the extreme gender imbalance. Between 2015 and 2024, 85 percent of Afghan asylum seekers in France were men. Women account for less than 18 percent of all Afghans in France who have a residence permit. Leschi explained that this reflects not only practical realities, such as restrictions on Afghan women traveling alone, but also cultural norms that subordinate women and exclude them from public life.
This gender imbalance has been a major driver of integration failure. “Young men who have been granted asylum find it difficult to integrate the norms of civility governing relations between men and women,” the report stated. Leschi added that in the OFII, where the majority of staff are women, “male-female interactions with Afghans are complex. There is a problem of recognition, of acceptance.”
These issues are compounded by poor education levels. Over 40 percent of Afghan arrivals have never attended school, and many cannot read or write even in their own language. Unsurprisingly, 57 percent remain unemployed 18 months after completing their initial integration program, and only half reach even a basic A1 level of French.
But it is the data on crime that is the most concerning. Citing German figures, the report noted that Afghans — who make up just 0.5 percent of the population — are five times more likely to be accused of criminal offenses and 21 times more likely to be implicated in the sexual abuse of minors. The report attributed part of this to “cultural violence inculcated in the relationship between men and women.” It also noted that in Afghanistan, underage marriage is widespread, with up to 65 percent of girls in some rural areas married before 18.
The note acknowledged there had been some success stories, particularly among Afghan women who do manage to resettle, but Leschi was clear that these are exceptions. “It’s not enough to say: The country is dangerous, people are coming, and that’s normal,” he wrote.
He also warned that France’s approach to integration, based on optional language classes and dispersing asylum seekers across the country, is lacking both structure and firmness. Refugees are allowed to refuse courses, and many end up isolated in medium-sized towns where social ties are difficult to establish. This isolation feeds what Leschi describes as “the community logic of confinement,” making assimilation all the more unlikely.