Paris- Migrants are not a drain on the public purse in developed countries, a pioneering study that measured the net fiscal impact of immigration in 27 Western countries showed Thursday, contrary to widely held assumptions.
The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) International Migration Outlook debunks several stereotypes about migration.
To evaluate the burden of migration on welfare systems the report compared immigrants' tax and social security contributions with their receipts in the form of social benefits and government services.
“Overall, it shows that the fiscal impact of immigration is close to zero on average over the OECD ... In other words, migration represents neither a significant gain nor drain for the public purse,” the Paris-based club of 34 developed and emerging economies said.
The report comes in the midst of mounting debate in Europe about the benefits of migration, with some countries such as Germany and Britain, complaining that migrants are abusing their generous welfare programmes.
It is a complaint also heard from nationalist parties across the continent, whose anti-immigrant platforms are wooing growing numbers of voters.
The OECD report showed that in most developed countries - including the United States, Britain and Spain - immigrants are, in fact, net contributors to state budgets.
Germany and France were among a handful of exceptions - a finding the report explained in terms of the age of immigrants in Europe's two biggest economies.
In both countries, “immigrant populations are relatively old, and thus overrepresented among the population receiving pensions,” the report explained.
While immigrants were not, in general, a drain on the public purse, their tax and social security contributions are generally lower than those of native-born citizens.
For the OECD, “this is not driven by a greater dependence on social benefits, but rather by the fact that with lower wages on average, immigrants tend to contribute less.”
There were exceptions here also, particularly in southern European countries such as Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal, where immigrants paid more in net contributions than the so-called native-borns.
Meanwhile, migration to OECD countries is back on the march, after three years of continuous decline.
The number of migrants rose 2 per cent in 2011 to almost 4 million.
Emigration from struggling southern European countries has raced ahead, rising 45 per cent between 2009 and 2011.
The number of Greeks and Spaniards moving to other EU countries has doubled since 2007.
While unemployment drives people to emigrate, the job prospects of migrants is growing bleaker.
Around one in two unemployed migrants in Europe had been looking for work for more than a year, the report said.
Presenting the report in Brussels, together with the EU commissioners for employment and home affairs, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria called on governments to “do everything they can to improve immigrants' job prospects.”
Helping immigrants integrate would ensure they “play their part in driving growth as the global economy recovers,” he said. - Sapa-dpa