Germany has paid over 132 billion euros, or $145bn (USD) to unemployed foreign nationals in state welfare since 2010, with the proportion of foreign benefit recipients having recently increased by a whopping 122 percent. The number of Germans receiving state welfare has halved in the same time period.
Foreign nationals make up 47 percent of welfare recipients as of 2023, despite being only 18 percent of the population. The German state spent 15.4 billion euros on unemployed foreign nationals alone in 2022 – almost 10 billion more than in 2010, in which the government spent 6.9 billion.
The largest foreign welfare recipients were 707,000 Ukrainian refugees. The second largest was just under 500,000 Syrians: more than half of the total population of Syrians living in Germany as of 2022. Turks ranked third, with around 200,000 claiming welfare. Below those countries were Afghans and Iraqis. There are 377,240 Afghans registered as living in Germany as of 2022, 176,000 of whom claim state welfare. Of the 284,595 registered Iraqis, 115,000 claim welfare.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP, Rene Springer, argues that Germany requires “a restrictive immigration policy that effectively prevents immigration into our social systems” because, he adds:
“The citizen’s allowance introduced by the federal government… acts as an immigration magnet.”
Germany’s failure to successfully integrate immigrants is having wider societal ramifications, such as the Berlin city council having to check identity cards to visit outdoor swimming pools to counter surging criminality often perpetrated by men with migrant backgrounds.
