Thursday, June 21, 2018

Asylum-seekers are not a burden

Asylum seekers moving to Europe have raised their adopted nations' economic output, lowered unemployment and not placed a burden on public finances an analysis of economic and migration data for the last three decades has found. The findings come amid a rise of anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe.
Asylum seekers added to gross domestic products and boosted net tax revenues by as much as 1 percent, said a study published in Science Advances by French economists. Asylum seekers contributed most to a country's gross domestic product after three to seven years, the research found. They marginally lowered unemployment rates and had a near-zero impact of public finances, it said.
The research from 1985 to 2015 looked at asylum seekers - migrants who demonstrate a fear of persecution in their homeland in order to be resettled in a new country. The research analyzed data from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. 
"The cliché that international migration is associated with economic 'burden' can be dispelled," wrote the scientists from the French National Center for Scientific Research, the University of Clermont-Auvergne and Paris-Nanterre University.
Chad Sparber, an associate professor of economics at the U.S.-based Colgate University, said the study was a reminder there is no convincing economic case against humanitarian migration.

2 comments:

Gramsci's cat said...

Or we could change refugees from being victims into people who will promote change and democracy in their home countries. This by providing them with resources ,skills and knowledge to do so. This can only be effective in the places where people congregate an masse , the refugee camps bordering conflict areas, think of the ANC . Stop the liberal whinging and virtue signalling the answer to persecution is to battle it

ajohnstone said...

If you look at our companion blog Socialist Banner that concentrates on African themes, there are posts contrasting the ANC's xenophobic policies to migrants and Uganda's much more open border and inclusive policies.

It is heart-breaking than refugees are mostly prohibited from working while awaiting their asylum application.