Maryse:
"- and the fact that, when given an oportunity to know the facts, most people prefer to ignore them.
That's because they engage in group thinking rather than relying on their personal intellectual curiosity. Granted, sometimes they don't have any - which is why group thinking is so appealing to them: one only has to stick to allegedly "well known truths" (Bush is stupid, the US went to Iraq for oil, etc.) even though the facts are in complete contradiction, and keep repeating them ad nauseam, as a very comforting therapy to their lack of culture and reasoning.
That's how you get 80% of our "fellow" citizens gently bleating on the same tone as their Great Leader Joke Cheerook, no matter their initial political positions.
Maryse, may I suggest an excellent book from one of the last worthy French thinker Jean-François Revel? If you haven't already, please do yourself a favor and read La Connaissance Inutile (for our English reading friends: The Useless Knowledge). That book is more than 10 years old, but its theses are still incredibly valid - It will cast some interesting light on the stupid behavior you can't tolerate anymore, just as I do.
"I cannot stand foreign people who choose to live here and then criticize the country. After all, we can assume that, imperfect as it is, it gives them a better life than their own country; if not, why stay?"
Simply put because the system encourages them to stay, collect the benefits and bitch:
"it's not enough, what about my (housing, caring, working... no, wait, not working) rights?"
Since the system will of course answer their demand (let's not forget that in France, the one who bellows the most - usually in the street, if possible by blackmailing the other - is the one who is right), then they have indeed all sorts of good reasons to stay, and keep bitching.
I'm all for immigration. I mean totally for it. I'm all for the free movement of people and goods.
Granted of course, that the system is not designed in such a way that it despoils Pierre to give to Ivan, Ahmed or Consuela, who came to live near Pierre not because they knew they would have the same opportunities (i.e. egality) but because they know they will be given more or less the same advantages and achieve the same position without actually working for it (i.e. egalitarianism) and incidentally at Pierre's expense and without leaving him the choice to give them or not.
Because that's when people such as Le Pen suddenly get Pierre's attention.
Other wrote it before me: the effects of the French system of social benefits (and "free" healthcare, almost "free" housing, etc.) is actually one of the root causes of racism in this country.