Austrian Minister Wolfgang Sobotka: 90 Percent of Migrants on Welfare

According to Austria’s largest newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, some 90 percent of asylum seekers (economic migrants) who entered Europe between 2014 and 2017 are on welfare—that is, they collect Austria’s “needs-oriented minimum allowance”.

Austria’s Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Sobotka, says that Europe cannot support the current number of migrants, much less any more, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel is calling for. Sobotka says:

Austria has borne the main load [on the migration route] from 2014 to 2017. Our system is simply overwhelmed… If you look at the asylum seekers, you can see that 90 percent are migrating to the needs-oriented minimum security system.

The Minister also went on to say, as have a number of his colleagues, that the Balkan migration route is still active, although the main theater is now shifting back towards Italy. Ideally, this will give Austria time to shore-up the border—although as of yet Austria still has “no security policy set up”.

Austria is Not Alone, Migrants are Impoverishing Europe

This newspaper has written extensively about the cost of the migrant crisis in Europe. Here’s an excerpt from our article on Sweden’s migrant crisis, it will give you a sense of the economic magnitude:

Sweden’s 318,000 “Syrian” refugees, or migrants, will cost the country a bare minimum of $18.6 billion USD in 2017.

That’s 19% of Sweden’s central government’s annual budget, and 3.2% of their GDP—imagine if the US spent $608 billion a year on refugees, same proportions.

That’s just over $58,490 per refugee per year. For reference, the average Swedish household’s disposable income is only $28,859 USD per year.

Of this, $8.7 billion are the hidden costs of increased migrant crime incidents (specifically, increased rates of rape and sexual assault)—which the government refuses to publicize.

Furthermore, migrants are not contributing to Sweden’s economy—of those refugees that came in 2015, only 500 have jobs.

Germany is in roughly similar circumstances: the current wave of migrants is estimated to cost Germany trillions in welfare payments, and other costs (most notably crime).

The same can be said of Denmark, where non-European immigrants and refugees eat up 59 percent of the tax surplus contributed by native Danes.

Why might this be? From the report:

Consider that ethnic minorities, who are by definition immigrants to Denmark, represent 84% of all welfare recipients, as of 2016.

Denmark also spends inordinate sums on crime committed by immigrants—8 of the 9 ethnic groups most represented in Danish prisons are non-Western immigrant groups, specifically Islamic immigrants.

In fact, non-ethnic Danes are 2-3 times more likely to commit crimes than Danes, and if their crime profile is anything like that of immigrants in Sweden, then it is likely that the crimes they commit are also generally more serious in nature.

Likewise, healthcare costs for immigrants groups are proving significant. For example, 40% of patients in Denmark’s largest mental health hospital have immigrant backgrounds.

At this point it should be clear to all reasonable observers that migration is not going to solve Europe’s economic problems—nor will it stave off their demographic decline. Despite what liberals claim, people are not fungible, and you cannot simply replace Germans with Syrians and expect the nation to remain as it was.

This is the primary reason why global open borders would only serve to impoverish the West—contrary to what The Economist, and other liberal newspapers, claim.

Migration is not a panacea, and it’s time Europe’s liberals recognized this fact.