Immigration and the welfare state: what about the natives?

The economic narrative against immigration is often based on the idea that most immigrants only find low-paying jobs, meaning they will end up receiving more from "our" welfare state than they contribute. They are, therefore, a bad deal. This argument would be economically irrefutable were it not for the fact that a large part of the local working population finds itself in the same situation. If immigrants represent a net cost to the public purse from the moment they arrive, this segment of the local population has had this cost since birth.

So, would we be better off without either of them? We would have to close factories, farms, shops, bars, hotels, offices, construction and service companies, nursing homes... And we would lose everything these workers produce and, therefore, the overall tax contribution they generate, paid by both the worker and the employer with what each earns: income tax from both, income tax from both where the law is followed, higher than what workers here and there will receive from the welfare state.

The social market economy aims to compensate precisely for these two economic realities through redistribution mechanisms, which ensure that those who take the most from the market – politicians, managers, professionals, owners and entrepreneurs –– They should also contribute more in taxes, and compensate for the deficit of those who take the least from the market, and without whom the former could not produce and sell anything.

Regardless of their origin, every employed worker contributes positively to the maintenance of the welfare state, even if indirectly; and, obviously, the more valuable and better paid their work is, the greater their contribution. The question is how many immigrants we should attract, and for what jobs, in order to maintain the current welfare state while offsetting the loss of the local workforce and the increase in pensioners; and to do so, moreover, at a time when the social predisposition to increase redistribution is declining. –?Is it because the number of receptors that are not "ours" increases?

This is what the studies show – British, Dutch, Danish...– of what the different groups receive and contribute according to origin: foreigners have few members -either none– Among those who profit the most from the market, almost all have low-paying jobs and, therefore, appear globally as untainted recipients of the profits from the establishments, as if the establishments weren't the ones taking advantage of them, and as if there weren't any untainted recipients among them. These studies are unfortunately biased.

Undoubtedly, immigration cannot be infinite, nor can it be the only solution to our problems of the sustainability of the welfare state, but neither is it its cause, and in any case it poses a social and cultural challenge no more difficult than –nor unfamiliar with– the challenge posed by social aging.