Using the UK as an example isn't the best, since they have had a low quota of selected refugees rather than wave after wave of asylum shoppers.
Even if our immigration level was at the highest level in the EU - to take Germany's 1 million in 2015 - we would still only be spending £1.87bn at the very worst (again, assuming that each of that 1 million is eligible for the grant, which a significant number of refugees aren't, and ignoring fiscal contributions from refugees) which would be 1.7% of our welfare budget plus additional costs in education and healthcare which we budget for anyway.
Refugee camps in the border areas of the conflict zones stand without the needed resources though. Moneys have been allocated from the camps to handle with domestic immigration issues. Well done us for being so good we force the majority to suffer to help young males from the MENA-regions.
The UK is among the leading funders of these camps. It's not our problem that certain European countries haven't kept up their international obligations. You can definitely do both, as we do. It is in our interest that we have a stable part of the world next to us and so all European countries should be helping with this.
The idea that we need a growing population to sustain the economy is a myth and an idiocy. For how long are we going to let it grow? It's not a sustainable idea, and it doesn't work in practice.
Well then we have to trim back the state massively. 175% of GDP as debt is not sustainable, nor is 100% - for contrast, around the time of the financial crisis our national debt peaked in the high 80%s. We either slash government spending massively (which has been proven time and again to be an ineffective long-term means of financial security), find a way to increase our birth rate massively or we top up with immigration, which is what the UK does now.
Refugees are also not the same as labour immigration. Labour immigration is a boost to the economy, refugees are not.
Perhaps not but I've shown that their effect on the economy is absolutely negligible. To me that's a price worth paying to do what is right and prevent slaughter in the Middle East.
reconnect with reality.
Lol. Refusing refugees and opting for wild, unreasonable right-wing populism has worked so well for our continent in the past.