There’s an interesting article at the Globe and Mail on Sweden’s experience with immigrants. Here’s a snippet:
It’s really very simple, Mr. Sanandaji explained. You can’t combine open borders with a welfare state. “If you’re offering generous welfare benefits to every citizen, and anyone can come and use these benefits, then a very large number of people will try to do that. And it’s just mathematically impossible for a small country like Sweden to fund those benefits.â€
Keep in mind that if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck it’s not duck-bashing to say it’s a duck.
The fun thing about Swedish immigration has been the increase in rapes. Did I say ‘fun’? I meant vibrant, of course.
“…it’s just mathematically impossible for a small country like Sweden to fund those benefits.â€
Even for big countries, like the U.S., it becomes if not impossible, indeed difficult to fund a bottomless pit of people requiring indefinite financial assistance. Unfunded liabilities do eventually catch up with nearsighted policy-making.
I think that the reasons the Germans just closed the border is that somebody sat down with a pencil and a napkin and started writing down numbers. A million “refugees” at $10,000 a head would cost the Germany government $10 billion.
Update
They estimate that they spend 12,500 euro per refugee. In round numbers then a million “refugees” will cost the German government $15 billion. That’s about ten times what they spent in 2013.