The use of data from the Ministry of the Interior to measure inflows in France » Xavier Thierry. INED

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the "Répertoire Inter-régimes de l'Assurance Maladie" (Health Insurance Inter-scheme Index). However, it is still too soon to predict any consequences it may have on migration statistics.

Until 1993, the IMO -the International Migrations Office -only performed the count of entries in France. The French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (L'Office Français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides -OFPRA) only plays a minor role in this count.

Since 1994, the Ministry of the Interior offers a supplementary counting method.

At present, the IMO remains an instrument for the inflow management policy. This policy is organised using some specific procedures such as, for example, the admission of permanent or seasonal workers, the regularisation of foreigners already residing in France and family reunions.

Foreigners wishing to come to France must go through the IMO to carry out some formalities provided for by these procedures. One of these formalities is a medical check organised by the IMO, which then issues a written certificate. The counting of medical checks performed serves as a count of entries.

Statistics produced by IMO carry some disadvantages:

-The IMO is only concerned with the regulated part of immigration, that is the entries of those people who do not enjoy the free circulation granted to EU citizens. Their work usually involves foreigners from third countries, although there are some exceptions to this rule. Children of refugees are not counted, since they are not included in the framework of the family reunion procedure; similarly, students are only partially controlled by the IMO because holders of French government grants are exempt from medical checks. The coverage by the IMO therefore only gives a partial picture of entries into France.

-Another disadvantage is that the scope of the population covered by the IMO is dependent on the evolution of regulation. Through the years, its original missions have evolved from the count of entries of workers alone to that of their family. Since 1986, this count has come to cover new categories that had until then been exempt from the medical check, such as students, visitors, families of French people and refugees. However, parallel to this extension, the process of European construction scales down its field of competence accordingly: the caused citizens from these countries to be excluded from the Office's scope. In the same way, the enlargement of the European Union to about ten Eastern European countries, supposed to take place over the next few years, foretells a new collapse of the completeness of IMO statistics.

-Another weakness is that, even in this non-EU citizens segment, the quality of the data produced appears dubious. This is because, for example, a foreigner who changes his/her status may have to undergo several medical checks. And again, it may also happen that some of them do not undergo any, which seems to happen more often than the first hypothesis. A study by Michèle Tribalat 2 highlighted a certain underestimate when the flow measured in the mid-nineties had fallen to a very low level. As for the totality of citizens of third countries, students included, according to the IMO, almost 57,000 new immigrants had apparently been granted residence in 1995, as opposed to 62,000 according to the Ministry of the Interior. A more recent study has indicated that there is an underestimate of minors of at least 10% 3 .

-Finally, since these statistics do not give any indication on the duration of the validity of the document that will be delivered, they cannot include international recommendations on migrations mentioned above.

We shall now illustrate the statistical system of the Ministry of the Interior. The real knowledge of this system had been limited to Ministry of the Interior officers until 1998, when the Minister of the Interior contracted INED and INSEE for a expertise mission on this statistical system4 . The ensuing report concluded that it was a highly promising administrative source in the field of statistics, but that its use was severely insufficient.

Actually, the fact that every foreigner over 18 living in France for a period of more than three months has to have some kind of stay permit puts the Ministry of the Interior in a central position vis-à-vis regular foreign immigration, since prefectures alone deliver stay permits to foreigners coming from third countries, without limitations. Since 1994, every prefecture is linked to a central data management application through computer terminals. This centralisation presents two main advantages:

-the first advantage is the one of allocating to each foreigner a national registration number, which is unique and unchangeable. In this way, double counts are avoided and a good 2 M. Tribalat, 1997, Immigration Chronicle, Population, n° 1, p. 185. 3 X. Thierry, 2000, Entries of foreigners in France, Population, n° 3, pp. 613-617. exhaustiveness of the register is guaranteed. The use of this number at every further administrative step means that, over the years, and for a given individual, a series of personal information is gathered.

-the second advantage is the possibility to collect a series of standardised data in all the prefectures, where the officers register the same information. This is useful under a regulatory point of view, when a first request of a residence permit is filed or at its renewal, or again when the procedure concerns a family reunion, the acquisition of French nationality, etc.

POTENTIALITIES AND SHORTCOMINGS OF THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR DATA

These are the two main qualities that make the information system of the Ministry of the Interior tremendously interesting under a statistical point of view.

The main work of prefectures is to deliver stay permits, whose type change according to the nationality of the foreign person (documents for EU citizens and similar categories, documents for Algerians and documents for citizens of third countries) and for different periods, ranging from one month to ten years. Yet, this computer application is far more than a record of people holding a stay permit, since it contains other types of information too. In fact, prefectures have a very large scope of activities as far as the implementation of law on aliens is concerned. They play a part in several fields which regulate foreigners' stays, and they sometimes decide directly; for example, they have information on requests of asylum, they express their judgement on family reunion requests, they are part of the procedures for the acquisition of nationality and they take removal measures from the French territory. As a rule, all the information they collect on these occasions has to be registered by public administration officials in various purpose-built forms, which can be activated from the terminals of the computer application, subject to the need to access information on a foreigner. In this way, the creation of a foreigner's record may start at the request of a residence permit, be the reason asylum, work, studies, etc. This personal record will be completed with supplementary information when further permit renewal requests are made or when administrative steps of another nature are taken (family reunion, naturalisation, removal…).

Officials are encouraged and sometimes forced to resort to this computer application to process requests. This is especially the case with the delivery of residence permits, for which the recourse to a computer is unavoidable. The issuing of the residence permit will only be effective if the information has already been registered in the application. Also, from a statistical viewpoint, the delivery of residence permits is the most reliable part of this application. For other tasks, the use of the application should be systematic in order to assure a good exchange of information at all administrative levels. However, this is not always the case. During our expertise' mission, which led us to visit a few prefectures, we detected some lacks in the use of this centralised tool; prefectures considered its use too complex and consequently preferred to set up some local computer applications. This situation obviously presents serious problems of loss of information from one prefecture to the other if the foreigner changes département (only the information entered in the centralised application will be transferred). This may even happen within the foreign section of a prefecture, among the offices dealing with specialised tasks. Apart from these restrictions, prefectures build the administrative path of the foreigner as it progresses and, under certain conditions, benefit from an access to this information resource. These data have in fact a considerable administrative value, since, in order to comply with various provisions of the law, prefecture officers may have to base themselves on some elements belonging to the foreigner's past when a new request is made. This is why information is kept in a historical computer record. For example, for some categories of foreigners, obtaining a residence permit valid for 10 years sometimes depends on having had the status of a legal resident for at least three years. Consequently, it becomes necessary to be able to check that this pre-condition is fulfilled. In this information age, the data kept on an electronic support naturally replace the traditional paper file. The existence of such a historical record is an opportunity for public statistics and this situation should not be neglected in a country that does not have a general population register. However, as the mission report clearly highlighted, this statistical potential was underused for a long time. This was because, except for some data on inflows produced by the Ministry on an internal basis and without great transparency on its production modes, no software for the systematic use of statistics has been set up. It is not sufficient to have a nice tool, it is necessary to make use of it. Yet, the legal entitlement to perform some data processing has been provided for by the decree which enforces this application and which explicitly makes mention of statistical aims. Therefore, there are no constraints on this front. It is then probably due to a lack of political will to make this tool the crucible of a deeper knowledge that this formidable information source has been dormant for many years, although its creation dates back to 1994. This source does however present some shortcomings as far as its scope is concerned. Ministerial data are not exhaustive for all ages and they only deal with one form of immigration. Still, solutions can be found.

In France, foreigners who are over 18 years of age (or over 16 if they want to work) are only required to hold a stay permit to be in a legal situation. Minors coming from third countries are admitted to France in the framework of family reunions and this agreement gives them the right to settlement without the need of obtaining a residence permit. Minors coming from a country which is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) benefit from free circulation and therefore come in and stay without formalities. As a consequence, these data concerning residence permits delivered does not give information on the entries of minors. To palliate to this inconvenience, for the time being, we advocate the use of complementary data concerning the entries of people under 18 years of age. The number of minors from third countries is assessed thanks to IMO statistics on family reunions and minors from EEA countries are located through information given by their parents at the delivery of a given document (source: Ministry of the Interior). On the other hand, to avoid counting these youths twice -the first time at their arrival in France when they are still minors and the second time when they come of age -documents delivered to youths who came to France before they were 18 and who have reached the legal age to hold one are excluded. The addition of these two segments of minors and adults results in foreigner inflows into France, of all ages and nationalities.

The second shortcoming of these data is surely due to the fact that, if we take residence permits delivered as a measurement unit of entries, we restrict our work to legal immigration and leave out those flows of foreigners who leave the territory without ever having obtained a permit, after having been illegal immigrants for a year or more. Illegal immigration, by definition, will never be totally quantified. However, it is partly known by prefectures, since the creation of a foreigner's record number can be done when a request of a residence permit is made but also when a police measure is taken. We could therefore suppose to produce a longitudinal indicator which, on the basis of a count of "first contacts" in the prefecture, would establish the proportion of those who, after a given number of years, have not obtained a legal right of stay. Since those foreigners who have not obtained the right of residence might have left the country, this indicator would certainly not allow to infer the actual number of illegal immigrants directly, but it would throw light on a demand of residence of which the migration flow currently identified today only represents a part.

PRACTICAL CONDITIONS FOR USE

Since the coming into force of the latest law regulating the entry and the stay of foreigners in France (11 th May 1998), every year the Ministry of the Interior is required to submit to the Parliament a statistical report showing the number of residence permits delivered. At the same time, for over twenty years now, INED has published in the "Population" review an article on the demographic situation called «La chonique de l'immigration». In 1999, for the first time, INED was able to obtain a certain number of aggregated statistical tables from the information service of the Ministry, which contains information on the residence permits delivered between 1994 and 1997 and which were then divided according to a limited number of variables. These data have replaced those of the IMO, after having been reworked to introduce the entries of minors (see above) 5 . In the year 2000, after the Ministry's decision to stop producing these tables, the Institute has performed instead an extraction based on anonymate of a part of individual information, on which users may perform instructions of their choice. INED, which has a copy of these records, has been able to carry out its own data processing to establish flows in the 1998-1999 period 6 . At present, the Ministry of the Interior and INED are the only two institutions who use these statistics. The national statistical institute, INSEE, keeps on using IMO data and these data are the ones which are transmitted to EUROSTAT, with all the faults illustrated above.

Primary data available to the Ministry of the Interior are substantial, due to the relatively high number of foreigners resident in France. During the 1999 census, INSEE counted almost 3.3 million people of a foreign nationality. In the same year, the Ministry delivered 600,000 residence permits (not including temporary documents), between first permits and renewals.

Therefore, identifying permits delivered exclusively to new immigrants within this bulk of information requires a rigorous methodology as far as statistical queries made on individual information go. Yet, the objective is quite clear. In France, at the beginning of the 1990's, under the leadership of the Haut Conseil à l'Intégration (High Council for Integration), an interdepartmental advisory body, it was decided to adopt as soon as possible the main UN recommendation, which defines the long-term immigrant on the basis of the famous criterion of a minimum stay of one year. In practice, its implementation should consist in selecting among the Ministry of the Interior records those foreigners who have obtained for the first time a residence permit of a duration equal to or higher than one year. Since the Ministry does not have a real statistical service, its capabilities to reach this objective in a rigorous manner are limited. Thus, its first official report was amended the following year, due to the fact that 45,000 permits were left out, apparently because of an error in computer programming 7 . The rectified report does not however appear more convincing 8 . In fact, the use of the same database by INED produced different results, which obviously brings up some questions. These gaps highlight the fundamental importance of the computer programming rules followed to extract from the database containing the whole of the permits delivered in a given year, only the first permits corresponding to the above definition.

Several examples illustrate the reasons for these gaps. First of all, it should be noted that a foreigner is not necessarily included in the statistics on immigration flows when he/she obtains his/her first residence permit, since this permit may have a duration of less than a year. Therefore, one should not systematically count the very first permit delivered, because sometimes the second (or third, etc..) permit is the one to be considered. As a result, in order to comply with the definition of first permits of a duration of one year, it is absolutely necessary to have a database containing the whole of the permits held by each foreigner. However, the use of information made by the Ministry of the Interior is different: the choice has been made to extract the permits delivered after a first request, whatever its duration 9 . Not only does this neglect the wealth of information contained in the historical record of residence permits, but it also uses a variable concerning the order of requests which does not appear very reliable.

Another example is that, at a closer analysis of the data, it appears that the duration of the permits entered by the operator in the prefecture differs from the one which is obtained afterwards by considering the difference between the expiry date and the issuing date, both of them expressed in days, months and years. We have thus established that 35% of the permits delivered to EU citizens and apparently classified as one-year permits in fact covered only a shorter period. While the Ministry uses the pre-defined duration, INED uses the calculated value.

Last but not least, there is the recent introduction of a new convention by the Ministry of

the Interior in its computer programmes. A permit produced in a given year (date of the start of validity) but not shown as delivered to the foreigner during the same year (date of delivery equal to 0) is now counted. The use of data by INED continues to exclude these residence permits, like in the past. Also, this choice seems to be justified by the fact that a very small minority of these permits is later renewed. There are therefore grounds to think that these first undelivered permits concern those foreigners who stay in France for a very short time.

It should thus be emphasised here that the availability of primary data represents a considerable advantage for the statisticians-demographers work in comparison with the data use made somewhere else, whose programming rules escape them or are badly explained. This allows to test the quality of variables and, when several solutions are possible, to make informed choices on what they consider to be the most suitable way to reach their objective for the measure of inflows.

In a nutshell, detailed data give them a possible control on the production of the figure. It would be desirable if this type of expertise led either to a common methodology between the institutions using these data or to the designation of a sole operator, in order to avoid displaying different results, which may jeopardise the credibility of the statistical system. Eventually, on the basis of the same data, in 1999 the Ministry of the Interior proposed an evaluation of inflows 18% higher than the one of INED.

8 Les titres de séjour des étrangers en France en 1999, deuxième rapport au Parlement, Ministère de l'Intérieur, 2000. 9 In its statistics on first permits, the Ministry therefore includes a part of permits of less than one year (but not temporary stay permits). The elements enabling to recalculate the number of first permits of at least one year are not provided. Thus, data production by the Ministry of the Interior does not comply with UN recommendations.

While complying with the international definition of the long-term immigrant, other solutions might have been adopted. We have simulated the level a flow would reach if we chose the duration of an actual year. Basically, we would need to select among the whole of the permits successively delivered to each foreigner (including temporary stay permits), those people who have been given a new permit at least one year after the very first document obtained. This calculated duration comprises the duration of the subsequent permits as well as any period that may have been spent in an illegal status. This duration may be obtained from the second permit when the request of renewal of the first permit is made (issuing of a receipt at least 364 days after the delivery of the first permit) or later, if the first permits have a very short duration and without an interval without a permit (linking of receipts). This technique cannot obviously be used for those foreigners who receive a permit valid for more than one year, for whom we have to suppose an actual stay of at least one year.

However, this method has a drawback with respect to the solution currently used. While the latter allows us to obtain statistics in very short periods (in n+1), the alternative method needs a longer observation period, in order to allow enough time to the whole group of first-time residents to go through all their administrative procedures. In addition, it needs a much bigger bulk of information which require a complete and well dated historical complete record of all the permits delivered. This makes it difficult to export to other countries as a comparative index. However, establishing flows through the use of this other method allows us to verify that the evaluation of the number of first permits of a duration of at least one year is a good enough approximation of the actual stays: inflows of adults in 1994, estimated at 104,000 on the basis of first permits, corresponded to 96,000 using a more refined method. The correspondence is perfect for flows of citizens from third countries (60,000 in both cases). The overestimation of the current method is due exclusively to an excessive count of permits concerning EEA citizens (44,000 and 36,000 respectively). This is due to the fact that only 34% of them ask for the renewal of their first one-year permit (as opposed to 71% of foreigners coming from third countries).

Table 2 Immigration flows of adults according to two conceptions of stay of at least one year (France)

Let us now abandon the perspective of counting the immigrants on the basis of an accomplished duration of stay and come to a simpler method, determining what the volume of immigration would be if the cursor now set at one year was pulled down to a shorter duration. It would be sufficient to select those foreigners who obtain a first permit of at least one year. Using a three-month

EEA

Third countries Total threshold, foreigners would be counted since they file a request for a residence permit, when a receipt or a temporary authorisation is delivered. Using a six-month threshold, these temporary documents would be excluded and the dividing line would be drawn approximately on the basis of the delivery of a real residence permit, without limits for its duration.

Establishing the inflow by choosing to use the first permits of at least six months does no change results in a significant way. This is because the vast majority of permits of less than a year (over 80%) end up being turned into a permit of one year or more. The two series evolve in parallel because the transformations of the permits of less than a year is done quickly.

If a larger definition is used, based on the delivery of first permits of at least three months, the level is slightly modified. This is explained by the fact that the delivery of a first permit does not inevitably result in a lasting stay. The flow calculated on this basis is at its lowest in 1996 with 107,000 documents (as opposed to 96,000 permits of at least one year) and it reaches 143,000 in 1999 (as opposed to 130,000). This result seems to show that the majority of foreigners who obtain a provisional three-month permit eventually receive a "proper" one-year permit. The choice of a duration threshold does not therefore have a significant influence on the inflow level. evaluation of immigration. On the other hand, they establish the basis of comparison with the countries that use a duration of stay other than one year. Finally, this exercise also shows that the data concerning residence permits, when they are kept in a historical record, can be used in different ways and therefore offer some freedom and some flexibility in the implementation of a given definition of the immigration flow. In other words, the data do not constrain users to one way of counting foreigners' entries, as it is apparently the case with population register data, which are based on the declaration of domicile.

CONCLUSION

The Ministry of the Interior data show to be totally appropriate to establish inflows if certain requirements are met. The computer record where residence permits are registered must be accessible from all the places where these permits are delivered, in order to guarantee a good exhaustiveness of the population index. In order to avoid that an individual be registered in several places, computers must be interconnected trough a centralised record, which makes it possible to check multiple identities under which the same person may present him/herself. This would avoid double counts to the maximum degree. Finally, it seems indispensable, at least with the aim of a statistical use of data, that the newly collected information do not replace the older information and that a database of individual information be created, containing the history of the administrative steps taken by the foreigner. The use of this historical record leads to truly rigorous analyses. The most important thing though is certainly the need to explore the possibilities of this system thoroughly before deciding on a precise, transparent and clearly explained methodology to quantify immigration flows. The French experience shows that the lack of statistical means of the Ministry of the Interior leads it to a flawed used of the record.

While this source can yield good results to establish flows, it cannot easily give information on the actual foreign population since not only illegal foreigners are badly represented, but especially because no reliable and complete information on departures is collected. Naturally, the departure of foreigners holding a one-year permit can be rapidly assessed, except for illegal situations, from the moment when no new request follows the expiration of a document. In France, however, 90% of foreigners hold a permit of five to ten years; therefore, they are not under the obligation of taking administrative steps every year during the long validity period of their permit. Thus, there is probably a considerable number of foreigners registered as holders of a stay permit, and therefore

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  The use of data from the Ministry of the Interior to measure inflows in France » Xavier Thierry. INED.France MED-Migr workshop on statistical administrative sources for migration statistics; Paris, 25-27 April 2001, 3 GENERAL POINTS ON THE SOURCES Contrary to several European countries, France does not have a population register. It is now introducing an index of its population without double counts, on the basis of social security data:

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  The use of data from the Ministry of the Interior to measure inflows in France » Xavier Thierry. INED.France MED-Migr workshop on statistical administrative sources for migration statistics; Paris, 25-27 April 2001, 6

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  The use of data from the Ministry of the Interior to measure inflows in France » Xavier Thierry. INED.France MED-Migr workshop on statistical administrative sources for migration statistics; Paris, 25-27 April 2001, 7

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  6 X. Thierry, 2001, Les entrées d'étrangers en France, Population, n° 2, to be published. 7 Les titres de séjour des étrangers en France en 1998, premier rapport au Parlement, Ministère de l'Intérieur, 1999. The use of data from the Ministry of the Interior to measure inflows in France » Xavier Thierry. INED.France MED-Migr workshop on statistical administrative sources for migration statistics; Paris, 25-27 April 2001, 9

Figure 1 «

 1 Figure 1 Immigration flows of adults according to different choices concerning the duration of the stay (France)

  appearing on the record, who have in fact left the country without the administration knowing it. At the end of 1998, the Ministry counted in its records 3.2 million foreigners, without considering illegal foreigners and minors. This figure seems overestimated, compared to the 3.3 million people counted by the INSEE, including minors and a part of illegal foreigners.

Recommendations on statistics for international migrations, 1 st Revision, United Nations, 1998.

« The use of data from the Ministry of the Interior to measure inflows in France » Xavier Thierry. INED.France MED-Migr workshop on statistical administrative sources for migration statistics; Paris, 25-27 April 2001,

G. Neyret, X. Thierry, M. Tribalat, 1998, Final report of the statistical mission on foreign citizens at the Ministry of the Interior, official report.

X. Thierry, 2000, les entrées d'étrangers en France, Population, n° 3.

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In Table 1, for illustration purposes, we present the results obtained for those countries who participate to EUROSTAT's MED-Migr project.

Table 1 Immigration flows into France for some nationalities

SOME ALTERNATIVE DATA EXPLOITATION METHODS WHEN ESTABLISHING INFLOWS

We have just presented a methodological solution to measure immigration flows on the basis of residence permits valid for at least one year and based on the use of the international definition of the long-term immigrant. This international directive does not specify the sense that should be given to this one-year criterion. Is it a supposed or an actual duration? Is it an intention of stay or an accomplished fact? Recent UN recommendations do not impose either of these ways, but they require that the indicator of duration used in statistical data be specified. The choice that has been made here to count those foreigners who obtain their first residence permit of a duration equal to or higher than one year favours the first solution, where individuals may leave even though a whole year has passed. According to a study carried out on residence permits successively given to foreigners, it appears that, when the first one-year permits expire, a sizeable proportion of foreigners do not request -or obtain -a renewal 10 . Only 59% of foreigners admitted in France with a one-year permit obtain a second residence permit after the first one has expired. We may suppose that the remaining 41% have left the country before the year has passed. Consequently, the measurement of inflows based on the delivery of residence permit with a duration equal to or higher than a year overestimates the actual stays of the duration of one year. On the other hand, this method does not consider those foreigners who, after having lived in France for at least one year, have left without obtaining a one-year permit. This is the case, for example, of asylum seekers, who are kept waiting for a more or less lengthy period and for whom the recognition rate does not eventually exceed 20%.