The German government has spent at least 400 billion euros on its immigration system since former chancellor Angela Merkel sparked the European Migrant crisis, a leading author has calculated.
While the political and economic establishment in Berlin attempted to sell the mass influx of foreigners into Germany as an economic boon that would provide the needed panacea to avoid the financial pitfalls of demographic decline, the decision to fling open the gates of Europe to migrants from Africa and the Middle East appears to have been far more costly than any forecasts by open-borders advocates a decade ago.
According to journalist Björn Harms, author of The Asylum Complex, Germany’s migration policy has cost taxpayers at least 400 billion euros ($448 bn) since 2016. However, he noted that this is a “conservative estimate” and that others have calculated that the immigration system has cost over a trillion euros during that time.
In an article penned in national paper of record Die Welt, Harms wrote that an entire industry dating back decades had emerged surrounding the asylum system, but that it emerged into fully fledged status from 2015 onwards after former chancellor Merkel uttered the infamous phrase “We can do it” and opened the borders to millions of migrants.
“Municipalities paid almost any price for a roof over their [migrants] heads, operating companies sprang up overnight, and empty hotels became gold mines,” he wrote. “A crisis situation turned into a market. And this market has remained, because since 2015, around three million people have come to Germany via the asylum system alone. While other industries are collapsing and hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost, this sector continues to flourish. Because the state guarantees its business model.”
Harms said the federal government has spent around 242 billion euros ($272bn) on “refugee-related expenditures”, much of it on accommodation for alleged asylum seekers.
Meanwhile, he estimated that the state governments of Germany contributed over 100 billion euros ($112bn) to the migration system from their local budgets, with further billions being spent at the municipal level, “as well as subsequent costs in healthcare, education, and the justice system.”
Harms said he compiled his calculations, which he claimed are the first to fully account for the cost of a decade of mass migration into Germany, by submitting data requests to federal and state ministries as well as municipal governments.
The author said that the bulk of the money spent on the migration system is “consumed” by providing accommodation to supposed asylum seekers. After contacting all 401 districts and independent cities in the country, Harms found that as of March of this year, at least 4,437 taxpayer-funded accommodations were housing around 295,000 people.
“In numerous locations throughout the country, hotel owners are renting out their vacant rooms, but municipal and state-owned companies are also profiting significantly,” Harms wrote.
He noted that in Hamburg, for example, the “Fördern & Wohnen” (Promoting & Housing) firm houses a significant portion of the city’s asylum seekers. However, this firm is not a private business, but rather is wholly owned by the city itself, which has thus profited mightily in housing supposed refugees.
Harms reported that the firm’s profits rose from around €60 million ($67mn) in 2013 to €747 million ($838mn) in 2025. Meanwhile, the number of people it employed rose from 948 in 2014 to 2,228 in 2025. “Migration is clearly a lucrative business,” he noted.
And despite Chancellor Merz’s promises to cut the cost of the migration and asylum systems, much of the spending appears to be baked in for years, if not decades, to come.
The author pointed to a nine-story office building in central Berlin that previously housed German Pension Insurance bureaucrats, which the Berlin Senate rented in 2024 to house asylum seekers, signing a lease for €165 million ($185mn) to use the property until 2035.
“Besides the owner and the negotiators, operators, security guards, and caterers will also be raking in the profits – at the expense of the German taxpayer. The Hasenheide in Berlin offers a small-scale example of how the asylum complex functions on a large scale. An entire industry has developed around mass immigration to Germany in recent decades,” Harms wrote.