- German taxpayers have spent at least €400 billion on migration since 2016, according to Welt journalist Björn Harms.
- The federal government alone spent more than €242 billion, while Germany’s 16 states added over €100 billion.
- Nearly 295,000 people live in at least 4,437 taxpayer-funded asylum housing sites in the districts that responded to Harms.
- Hamburg’s city-owned asylum housing company saw its turnover soar from €60 million in 2013 to €747 million in 2025.
- Harms argues the spending has created an entrenched industry that profits from continued migration.
When a former managing director of Hamburg’s city-owned asylum housing provider collected €453,000 after serving less than five months on the job, including a fat severance package, it offered a revealing glimpse into who really wins under Germany’s open-border policies. The staggering price tag for those policies? At least €400 billion (about $448 billion) since 2016, according to Welt journalist Björn Harms, who calls that a conservative floor. The real number, when factoring in costs the government doesn’t track, likely runs far higher.
How federal, state, and local spending adds up to a €400 billion burden
Official Bundestag reports and Finance Ministry data put federal refugee-related spending at more than €242 billion between 2016 and 2025. Annual spending climbed from €20.1 billion in 2016 to a high of €29.6 billion in 2023, settling at €24.8 billion for 2025.
Beyond the federal budget, Germany’s 16 state governments chipped in over €100 billion of their own money, and municipalities spent billions more. Many follow-on costs in healthcare, schools and the courts are hard to pin down, which is why Harms treats his total as a minimum.
University of Freiburg public finance professor Bernd Raffelhüschen went further in a 2024 study, estimating that migration as it has unfolded adds about €5.8 trillion to Germany’s long-term fiscal gap.
Housing migrants has become a booming business
Accommodation consumes a massive share of the budget. Harms contacted all 401 of Germany’s districts and independent cities, and the 320 that responded reported at least 4,437 taxpayer-funded communal housing sites sheltering nearly 295,000 residents as of March 2026. Extrapolated nationwide, that’s roughly one in every 227 people in Germany living in government-paid asylum lodging.
In Hamburg, the city-owned company Fördern & Wohnen saw turnover explode from €60 million in 2013 to €747 million in 2025. Its workforce more than doubled from 948 employees in 2014 to around 2,228 by 2025.
Meanwhile, Berlin is turning a nine-story former pension office building on Hasenheide in Kreuzberg into housing for up to 921 people. The city signed a €165 million lease that runs until 2035, but it won’t say what the conversion costs, citing commercial confidentiality.
Billions for language courses, courtrooms and other hidden costs
Integration courses cost about €1.3 billion in peak years and roughly €1.2 billion in 2024. Yet outcomes fall short: only about 55 percent of those who sit the final test achieve the target B1 language level, with many leaving at A2 or below. The Federal Employment Agency also links part of the growth in social workers, from 278,000 in 2015 to 351,000, to refugee-related demand.
Then there are the courts. After Saudi national Taleb al-Abdulmohsen drove an SUV through a Magdeburg Christmas market in December 2024, killing six and injuring more than 300, authorities had to erect a temporary courthouse large enough for hundreds of victims and relatives, at an estimated cost of €4.5 million. That’s for a single defendant, who was sentenced to life in June.
Follow the money: Who profits from perpetual migration?
Harms describes a system where “a crisis situation turned into a market”—and that market persists. Berlin’s Hasenheide project and the Hamburg housing director’s golden parachute demonstrate the same pattern: the state creates the demand, and its own companies cash in, with taxpayers footing the bill.
The result, as Harms sees it, is a built-in lobby for more migration. State-owned firms, landlords, language course providers, NGOs and social service agencies all depend on the money continuing to flow. Meanwhile, those cheering loudest for open borders are rarely the ones living next door to a shelter or watching their kids’ classrooms fill up.
Americans have reason to pay attention. Washington has long paid nonprofit agencies a per-person fee to resettle refugees, and any system that ties an organization’s income to the number of arrivals invites the same incentives Harms describes.
Germany’s €400 billion represents a minimum. The full bill, once policing, schools and courts are tallied, will be higher still. And with Berlin locked into a lease running to 2035, German taxpayers will keep paying long after the politicians who opened the doors have left office.
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