The true cost of accepting migrants

Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland)

The German government is being uncharacteristically cagey about just how much refugees are costing the nation, said Wolfgang Bok. Since 2014, 1.7 million people—most of them unskilled and uneducated—have applied for asylum in Germany, and “worried citizens are outraged” over the lack of information about how the country is coping. For a nation “that typically tots up the cost of every bolt and screw,” this suspicious dearth of hard data can only be explained by fear of what voters would say if they knew how vast the sums were. For example: The budget allots about $110 billion to provide for refugees from 2016 to

2020. Since Germany’s states say that covers just half their expenses, the true cost for that period is probably $210 billion. Even that sum does not include funding for thousands of new schools, much less the hiring of additional judicial and bureaucratic staff to process asylum requests. Nor does it include the cost of treating the “drastic increase in dangerous infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and AIDS, that have come into the country with the refugees.” Over their lives, these people will cost Germany hundreds of billions of dollars. That is “the elephant in the room” that everyone pretends not to see.