Unemployed refugees and their family members cost the German state over €6 billion ($7 billion) annually, according to data obtained from the German Ministry of Labor
The data emerged from the Ministry of Labor in response to an information request from Harald Weyel, the Bundestag representative of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and made available to Junge Freiheit.
Weyel originally asked the federal government what the average monthly costs for the accommodation, care and support of an asylum seeker are. According to the Ministry of Labor, however, this cannot be answered using the data from the regular asylum seeker statistics alone. More precise information could only be given here in relation to the basic social security statistics for job seekers.
In May 2020, for example, there were around 397,000 beneficiary groups (mostly families) “with at least one employable beneficiary with a residence status in the context of refugee migration”, according to the Ministry of Labor’s response. “The average monthly payment entitlement of these beneficiary groups was €1,389 and includes the entitlements for all members of these benefit communities.”
Unemployed migrants cost around €550 million a month
Accordingly, the social costs for unemployed or low-income refugees as well as their family or household members amounted to more than €551 million in May alone. Extrapolated across the year, that would be around €6.6 billion.
For Weyel, the figures are further proof that the asylum wave of 2015 and its financial consequences are far from over.
“The federal government tries to disguise the costs of its ‘welcome policy’ in various statistics and budget items. Here, we have very specific figures for what a certain group costs the German taxpayer every month,” he told Junge Freiheit.
Weyel explained that more than €6 billion are an enormous sum that the “normal wage earner” can hardly imagine.
“That’s why I like to convert such numbers into single family houses so that it becomes more understandable. If you put the average cost of your own home at around €350,000, we’re talking about almost 19,000 single-family homes every year, and only for support benefits for unemployed refugees and their families. This is madness!”
Weyel said it was incomprehensible for him that the federal government — which recently agreed to accept more migrants from Greece’s Moria Camp even after five Afghans were arrested for setting their own camp on fire — is bringing more and more migrants to Germany instead of reducing their number through consistent deportations and repatriations.
“Horst Seehofer and Angela Merkel may bask in their self-declared humanity, but it is the German taxpayers who have to pay for it,” Wevel said.
Wevel is not the only one raising concerns, with even members of Merkel’s party also decrying the state’s response to the migrant crisis. This year, German Interior Minister for the state of Saaraland Klaus Bouillon (CDU) said that Germans are growing less tolerant of new arrivals due the record number it receives every year.
“There is great discontent among the population because everyone who arrives here immediately has many or even more rights along with rights to benefits and medical care than someone who has worked here for their entire life,” said Bouillon.
Germany has also paid enormous costs for training, employing and integrating refugees. In 2018, the German government spent a record €23 billion on migrants, including rent subsidies, jobless payments, language lessons, and other benefits. That figure does not account for what individual states spent either, with Hamburg’s government releasing data showing it spent €5.35 billion on asylum seekers between 2015 and the end of 2019.
As Remix News previously reported, the issue of crime, terrorism, and the enormous financial and social costs Merkel’s decision to allow over one million migrants into the country has had a profound affect on Germany in the last five years.
