For the first time, the city of Berlin’s Senate has received a detailed breakdown of all asylum costs in the city, revealing the high costs of foreigners for Germany’s capital city.
Last year, the city spent at least €2.1 billion, which equals 5 percent of the entire budget, reads a report prepared by the Senate Administration for the Main Committee of the House of Representatives.
As Remix News has previously reported, details on spending on migrants have been released before, such as the cost of asylum housing; however, this report is more detailed and includes other costs as well, all in one place.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 18, 2024
Germany's Green Party is calling for "women-only" train cars in Berlin due to soaring sexual assaults.
In February, Iranian migrant Moshen K. raped a 63-year-old woman on the U3 train line, sparking outrage.
Since 2013, sexual violence crimes have jumped 260% in Berlin. pic.twitter.com/Xunuj84hpu
Nevertheless, the report mentions that it does not truly capture all the costs associated with Berlin’s foreign population.
“The amount of expenditures lost in the area of refugee migration can only be estimated approximately, since many expenditure areas also, but not exclusively, benefit refugees,” reads the document.
The largest cost is accommodation, which amounts to nearly €1 billion per year. Young asylum seekers are especially expensive, with Berlin paying out €250 million to accommodate unaccompanied minors in 2024. In the same year, the capital received 1,700 new arrivals under the age of 18.
The second-largest cost is related to social welfare benefits, coming in at €618 million, which includes child benefits and citizen allowance benefits, which is the term for German welfare payments.
Ukrainian asylum seekers are also not factored into these costs, which could be adding hundreds of millions more, because they are not legally considered asylum seekers.
Asylum seekers receive different sums of money depending on their situation, with individual asylum seekers receiving €441 per month for personal needs, while couples receive €397 per person.
Taxpayers are also on the hook for integration courses and education, which costs €262 million a year. Of that sum, the largest cost is “welcome classes” for school-age migrants, which amounted to €121 million.
However, other costs are not accounted for in these figures. For one, an influx of foreigners, at least in the numbers Berlin has seen in recent years, has driven up the cost of housing, led to increased burdens on the healthcare system, and has sharply driven up serious crimes. In fact, the latest statistics show that foreigners are responsible for 43.8 percent of all crimes in 2024.
Berlin has responded to this funding crisis by cutting back on payments to teachers and cutting the budget in other areas in order to pay for these newcomers.
Now, with a new debt deal struck between the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), Berlin and other German states are receiving a reprieve, which will allow them to take on new debt to pay for migrants. As Remix News reported, Berlin is going to take out hundreds of millions more in debt every year to pay for its ballooning asylum population.
Economics Senator Franziska Giffey (SPD) announced Berlin will take out an “emergency loan for refugee costs.”
“We are planning our state budget for 2026/27 under the assumption that we will be able to access further loans,” she said.
