When Central and Eastern European leaders try to explain why they do not want to accept refugees, they tend to contradict one another. Some insist that refugees take jobs from natives, which implies that refugees are hard workers; others complain that refugees rely on welfare benefits, which suggests that they work too little. [...]
According to the European Social Survey, there is little agreement in Europe about whether refugees and migrants take existing jobs, or actually create new ones (see chart above). At Odlišnost (Distinction), a collective of academics and journalists, we have reviewed 20 empirical studies to determine the effect that immigrants had on native workers in Europe and the Middle East between 1990 and 2015. All told, we found little evidence to support the claim that accepting a reasonable number of refugees and migrants from developing countries deprives native-born workers of employment. [...]
But high- and low-skill migrants alike contribute to the efficient division of labor in their host countries, because language and other differences make it harder for them to compete with locals. The studies we examined show that, in terms of wages, immigrants from close neighboring countries put a small amount of downward pressure on the wages of low-skill natives. With immigrants from afar, however, this negative effect disappears. [...]
It turns out that asylum applicants typically have little to no knowledge of a country’s labor-market conditions or welfare benefits before they arrive. Rather, they are usually guided by the circumstances of their journey. And when they do consciously choose a country, they tend to look for places where their compatriots or relatives already live, or where they already know the language, owing to past colonial ties.
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