Migrants of a “non-Western origin” are massively overrepresented in Denmark’s benefits system, according to new figures from the Ministry of Employment.

Of all totally dependent families in Denmark, married couples where both partners are on social assistance — state benefits — some 84 per cent are “non-Western origin” migrants. In total, a third of all cash paid out in benefits every month goes to these non-Western migrants in Denmark, according to the latest figures obtained by Ekstra Bladet.

These figures might be considered especially high, as among Denmark’s working age population non-Western migrants make up just eight per cent of residents. The paper reports experts agree the phenomenon of a minority group of eight per cent of the population making up such a significant part of the claimant count, and concede it is a “large and especially expensive problem”.

It is estimated Denmark’s migrants cost the government some 11 billion crowns (£1.1 billion) a year reports BT, a significant sum for a country of just five and a half million people.

Offering an explanation for this apparent predilection towards worklessness among non-Western migrants in Denmark, Ekstra Bladet links the latest news to the comments of a government troubleshooter tasked with getting migrants into work made in 2015. Specialist job centre chief Eskild Dahl, who remarked at the end of his tender at the facility that he had spent “an awful lot of money to virtually no effect” in trying to get migrants into work.

Those migrants he came into contact with on a daily basis saw government cash assistance as a right, and the so-called “refugees” generally saw work as “punishment” to be avoided at all costs. The fundamental problem was that the Danish welfare state was built on the Protestant work ethic and was incompatible with the new arrivals he said, reports the Berlingske.

It is the unusually frank bookkeeping practised by the Danish government that allows these statistics about worklessness in migrant communities to be reported. Unlike many Western countries, Denmark recognises, even among full Danish citizens who are legitimately ethnic Danish, those migrants from Western nations, and those from further afield.

With an eye on this count of the number of actual Danes in the country, the government expresses concern about demographic change and population levels. As Breitbart London reported despite the overall Danish population rising because of immigration the actual population is falling. According to government statistics, just 89 per cent of people in the country were Danish in 2014.