Simon Kovacic, Voice of Europe, November 11, 2017

Recently Austria’s finance minister, Hans Jörg Schelling, admitted that refugees or migrants are costing the nation about €1.8 billion on a yearly basis. That’s almost the same budget than that of the country’s national army.

To check Austria’s migrant costs, we did some calculations. Since 2015, Austria has taken about 150,000 migrants. Each one receives about between €500-€900 each month for basic care (the amount varies in every region).

Taking €600 as an average on the lower side, this leads to a minimum of about €7,000 a year. Multiplying the number of migrants with the previous amount makes that basic care alone costs the country’s taxpayer €1 billion annually.

On top of this, add the costs for housing, education, and healthcare; which brings the amount close to the sum mentioned by Mr. Schelling. But this sum is surely going to increase in the future and here’s why.

At the moment that some of Austria’s states slashed the cash payments for refugees, they flocked to the state of Vienna where the payments were not reduced.

According to Austrian media, migrants in Vienna receive €914 a month. This is the result of politicians who were against any budget cuts, despite high debt levels and a rapidly increasing unemployment rate.

What is a sheer irony here, is that a native farmer, who worked hard all his life, receives a pension of €620. At the same time an asylum seeker in Vienna receives almost €300 euros more for doing nothing.

The budgets mentioned here do not take into account additional costs for managing law and order situations related to migrant crimes, terror threats and extra security.