The Price of Immigration

At Amnation Mr. Laurence Auster wrote:

A friend has repeatedly raised this question and perhaps there is a VFR reader who can answer it: How is it that (1) Europe needs an ongoing flood of Muslim immigrants to work and pay taxes to support Europe’s pension plans; but (2) the European economy is stagnant and Muslims are unskilled, socially isolated, unemployed, and on the dole?

this question has been raised for and answered by a Dutch investigative journalist in 1999. Pieter Lakeman published a 194 page book: "Binnen zonder kloppen" ("Enter without knocking"). The book writes about the early history of Muslim immigration in the 1960ies to the presents, calculates to cost of immigrants to Dutch taxpayers (about 70 billion guilders between 1965 and 1995) and makes some projections about the cost per family of immigrants entering the Netherlands in that time (about 8.000 families of 5 persons per year on a 15 million population, each costing a projected 900.000 guilders over their lifetime or approx. 450.000 US Dollars. Added up that is 3.6 billion dollars or about 0.5 % percent of Dutch GNP asylum related costs incurred per year, during the 90ies).

The book also addresses the 60ies employer's lobby for cheap immigrant labour when the labour market was tight and the opposition to it from the Left. Also he shows that in the 80ies and later immigration increasingly became an ideological matter to the Left, who reversed their earlier position and silenced all opposition to it from the newer smaller Leftist (Socialist Party) and Right (Centrum Democrats).

The reason for continued immigration is that it has become ideological prop for Liberalism. The economic rational is a non-sensical standard retort to silence opposition from the "Right", who these days mostly think in economic terms and free markets.