Little attention is placed on the positive results that the millions of recent migrants and refugees have bestowed upon Germany. Yes, there are a few bad apples among the mix, but despite some anti-migrant rants on how these newbies will ultimately destroy the very core of the German economy and culture, some new figures released last week appear to paint a different picture — one in which the migrants save the social security systems millions of Germans rely on for survival.
Focus magazine and the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on recent data from the German Statutory Pension Insurance Scheme (Deutsche Rentenversicherung) that points to the rapidly increasing immigrants as stabling the government-offered health insurance and pension system at a time when its future was looking bleak.
Between 2008 and 2015, the social security systems got a boost of 1.7 million non-Germans paying into the system — a 53-percent increase — and due to the younger demographic of these new entrants, the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV) has stated that the system is now expecting to see a revenue surplus of more than €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion).
The migrants are good news for those worries about the future of their benefits, but as all stories must have two sides, one might ask what the system could look like without the average €20 billion ($23.5 billion) that the refugee crisis is costing Germany per year.
