COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, September 09, 2024

QUESTION NO.

QUESTION: Councillor L. de Courcy

To ask the Chief Executive for the studies showing the positive economic impact migrants have on our economy as claimed in the SDCC Fact or Fiction factcheck leaflet "Migrants benefit our economy". Specifically, distinguishing between educated EU migrants and migrants from non-EU countries.

REPLY:

The Fact and Fiction leaflet campaign was a shared initiative between the then Mayor’s office, South Dublin Volunteer Centre, and South Dublin County Partnership. It came about from work in the Community Integration Forum and looked at providing evidence-based statements on migration.

The section “Migrants benefit our economy” is based on a journal article from Science Advances (science.org) titled Macroeconomic evidence suggests that asylum seekers are not a “burden” for Western European countries (2018) and is available at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaq0883#body-ref-R29  

The abstract from the article is below.

This paper aims to evaluate the economic and fiscal effects of inflows of asylum seekers into Western Europe from 1985 to 2015. It relies on an empirical methodology that is widely used to estimate the macroeconomic effects of structural shocks and policies. It shows that inflows of asylum seekers do not deteriorate host countries’ economic performance or fiscal balance because the increase in public spending induced by asylum seekers is more than compensated for by an increase in tax revenues net of transfers. As asylum seekers become permanent residents, their macroeconomic impacts become positive.

Studies have also shown that new migrants, when allowed to work, have a net positive impact on receiving countries, see for example THE FISCAL EFFECTS OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UK Dustmann, Christian and Frattini, Tommasso, The Economic Journal, Doi: 10.1111/ecoj.12181 © 2014 Royal Economic Society. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

There are various studies of the positive economic impacts of refugees from other conflicts, such as, 'Winners and losers among a refugee-hosting population', by Jean-François Maystadt and Philip Verwimp https://cdn.uclouvain.be/public/Exports%20reddot/core/documents/coredp2009_34.pdf

Since the publication of the leaflet, the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) has requested permission from South Dublin County Council to use the leaflet as a template to provide to Local Authorities nationally to run similar awareness-raising campaigns.