to care for the extra people. Many governments such as the UK are already running a large budget deficit of 6.582 billion pounds (Trading, 2016) and will have to borrow more money to finance the extra government spending. If the government don’t increase spending on public services, there are likely to become overcrowded. This would lead to more people taking time off work and children receiving a poorer education, thus resulting in a less productive workforce. Worsening productivity show an economy is struggling. In addition to an increase in budget deficit by increased spending, the government will have to directly spend on the immigrants. Immigrants of working age will be able to pay taxes as they work but unemployed immigrants such as elderly people will receive benefits and the parents of child immigrants will receive benefits too. This means the budget deficit will have to increase further, otherwise these immigrants will be in poverty. Immigrants usually come from countries where they do not have a good life, and do not usually have much money. Therefore, they will have to claim benefits at least till they find a job. A study has shown that due to an increase in welfare dependency for immigrants, fiscal contributions by the governments will have to increase, putting a lot of strain due to existing debts (Borjas, 2014). Although refugees immigrate to countries to try and have a better quality of life, they may not have the security they would have expected to have. Although the UK system seems appealing and generous to immigrants, they only receive £36.95 a week. (Asylum Support, 2016). This works out to around £5 pounds day which is near impossible to live off. Therefore, refugees who come to the UK and are unable to work will essentially be living in poverty. There is no benefit for refugees to go a different country and be impoverished there, especially after having to make treacherous journeys. The risk of these journeys can be seen on the following chart showing how many migrants died on the Mediterranean Sea each month from January 2014 to February 2016.
Furthermore, since the immigration of refugees puts a lot of pressure on the countries they come to, the opinions on refugees of local people tend to worsen. In Denmark, due to the outcry against refugees by Danish people, the Denmark government have taken measures to persuade immigrants not to go to Denmark. With 10% of the Danish population being immigrants, it is clear that Denmark wasn’t always against immigration (Delman, 2016). The Danish government have put out adverts in Lebanese newspapers and have imposed a law that they can seize any assets worth over 2000 Canadian dollars. By refugees immigrating to a country and putting pressure on the economy, it results in worse conditions for refugees as they are seen as a burden
and are often discriminated against.
Immigration has many effects on an economy. Studies show that immigration will only increase GDP per capita by 0.1% in the UK annually (Green, 2016). But the possible productivity gains that may arise due to immigration are hard to quantify. Since immigrants can fill skill gaps and create new industries, it depends on what type of immigrants are entering a country. Places like Australia operate on a point based system which determines the usefulness of a person to the country depending on their occupation. Immigration with such a
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