Marine Le Pen calls for end to legal immigration to France

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has called for an end to all immigration to France, legal and illegal. In a speech aimed at rallying her Front National (FN) ahead of regional elections, she failed to mention her father's explusion from the party but did lay into immigrants, Islamists and President François Hollande.

Front National leader Marine Le Pen AFP

"They don't tell you this but the immigration situation in France is totally out of control," Le Pen said at a meeting to mark the start of France's new political season. "My aim is clear: to stop immigration both legal and illegal."

The FN's programme officially calls for immigration to be limited to 10,000 people per year but Le Pen went further, declaring, "We need national borders for France."

Undocumented immigrants should not receive state-funded medical care and social security payments to asylum-seekers should end, she said.

Repeating a demand she made after the 21 August failed attack on a high-speed train from Belgium to France, she called for "all foreigners on file for links with radical Islamist movements to be deported", adding that "radical mosques" should be closed and their imams be thrown out of the country if they are foreigners.

Hollande was a "do-nothing president", she told her audience in the village of Brachay, where she 72 per cent of the votes in the last presidential election.

The current farming crisis should be solved by scrapping the Common Agricultural Policy, Le Pen said. "No compromise is possible with the European Union."

The FN president did not mention this summer's bruising battle with her father that resulted in his expulsion.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has announced his intention of turning up at the FN's summer school in Marseille on 5-6 September.

The new party leadership is unlikely to give him a hearty welcome.