Economic value of immigrants to Finland calculated

The economic value of people moving to Finland has been assessed by a think tank associated with the populist Finns Party, and the report has just been published ahead of the parliamentary election due in two weeks.

The survey concentrated on the 10 largest sources of immigration defined as countries where an immigrant was born.

In their pecking order, Germans were considered to have brought the most positive value to Finland, and Chinese came behind. In some parts of the study, however, the Swedes were put the second and Chinese the third. Those from Somalia were believed to bring the greatest loss of money.

According to the report, immigration costs Finland around 700 million euros (756 million U.S. dollars) per year. In 2011, immigrants born in Somalia caused a 14,000-euro economic loss as a net impact per person on the Finnish public sector, while those born in Germany brought 2,000 euros to the coffers of the state.

The net impact was calculated through comparing taxes and other payments to the government with subsidies and income transfers received.

The financially positive sources were Germany, China, Sweden and Estonia. The negative sources were former USSR (without the Baltic republics), Turkey, Thailand, former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia.

Commenting to Xinhua, director of the Finnish Institute of Migration Ismo Soderling noted that, internationally, the costs of "asylum based immigration" and "employment based immigration" are normally analysed separately.

"There is no sense comparing Germans, Somalis and Chinese as the motivation for moving, the types of families and demographic structure are largely dependent on the country of origin," Soderling said.

During the Finnish IT boom, Germans moved to Finland to work. However, German emigration to Finland has a wider background than work. Of the some 6,000 Germans living in Finland, half are married to a Finn.

Those born in Sweden are often descendants of the major Finnish wave of emigration in 1960s when half a million Finns moved to Sweden.

The survey was based on the situation in 2011. In that year there were 6,300 residents of Chinese origin living in Finland. The number was almost the same as those from Somalia.

Of the "top four" beneficial movers, as seen by the Finns Party, only the Chinese are behind a permit barrier.

While emigration from the European Union is free, Finland maintains a system assessing the need for emigration from outside of the Union. If Finland suffers unemployment in a certain sector, then work permits in this sector are hard to get.

In their parliamentary election programs, the Centre Party, the National Coalition Party, the Green Party, the Swedish Party and the Christian Democratic Party all favour giving up the assessment of need system. The Finns Party insist the necessity to keep it. Soderling saw the stands of the Social Democratic Party and the Left League as unclear.

While labor unions are largely sceptical about increased immigration, Soderling said that in Canada the observation has been made that in sectors where foreign labor is used on a large scale, salaries tend to give way downwards, but at the same time unemployment decreases. Endit