2 - The fiscal impact of migration

Summary

No one can have failed to take note of the public debate and political manoeuvring over the fiscal impact of migration, in general, and of refugee migration, in particular. As one author puts it, “Fiscal impacts of immigration are one of the hottest and most controversial topics in recent debate on migration” (Kaczmarczyk 2015). “Objections to the perceived burden placed by immigrants on public finances,” another author observes, “seem to motivate much popular opposition to immigration” (Preston 2014: 569). “Is migration good for the economy?” is the title of an OECD paper that goes on to ask: “Benefit or burden – what's the reality” (OECD 2014: 1). Under the title “Are migrants good for the host country's economy?” yet another scholar observes: “Indeed, the impact of migration on the host country's economy is possibly the most crucial question that policy-makers have to answer. Furthermore, it is a question that can drive changes in immigration policies as well as ignite fervent debates in the media and other forms of public discourse” (Ratna 2016: 75; see also Vargas-Silva 2015).

According to Dustmann and Frattini (2014: 593), moreover, the public concern over “whether immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems […] is more important for individuals’ assessment of immigration policies than concerns about wages or employment”. As already noted, numerous surveys confirm this, with public attitudes heavily in favour of the notion that migrants burden the public purse and that they receive more welfare benefits than they help to finance (Dustmann & Frattini 2014: 593– 4; Preston 2014). In the Fondapol (2017) survey that I referred to in the previous chapter, an overwhelming majority of the respondents were not only of the opinion that refugees harm the economy; almost 90 per cent also said they were “worried” or “very worried” about “funding for social programs”. In addition, 77 per cent expressed these same sentiments over “government debt and deficits”.