23 The overall fiscal impact of refugee flows is likely to be small. It is negative at first as they are costly to house and support when they first arrive and it takes time for them to learn the language and find work, when they are allowed to work. Since most refugees are young, studies suggest that their fiscal impact becomes positive on a cash‐flow basis in less than a decade and positive on a present value basis a few years later. Like economic migrants, refugees that are more skilled tend to have a more favorable fiscal profile than the less skilled<sup>29</sup> . However, at least one study reviewed below suggests that less‐skilled refugees once settled and started working, have a more favorable fiscal profile than low‐skilled natives because they draw less on social benefit programs.

Many studies of the fiscal impact of immigration exist, while very few analyze the fiscal impact of refugees. Statistics relating specifically to the employment of refugees, the taxes they pay and benefits they receive, and especially those that do so over the lifetime of refugees, are scarcely available: “...what refugee literature does exist tends to concern very specific populations, uses very small samples, relies on data from a small number of countries with high refugee totals, or focuses on very short‐term outcomes” (Evans and Fitzgerald, 2017). Studies of the fiscal impact of general immigration, which include immigration for work, to reunite families, as well as refugees, help shed light on that of refugees – even though there are major differences between the groups.

# <u>Fiscal Impact of General Immigration and of Refugees in Particular</u>

The assessment of the fiscal impact of immigrants depends crucially on the methodology used and on the precise question being asked. Thus, the fiscal impact can be measured in a given year as is most commonly done, or over the lifetime of the immigrant, and accounting or not for the debt incurred by current and future generations of natives, and accounting or not for the general equilibrium effects on the economy, including the impact of immigration on economic growth, i.e. on investment, labor participation by natives and on total factor productivity. Different methods can and do yield different answers, not only quantitatively but also directionally.

Still, the academic consensus on the fiscal impact of immigration can be pithily summarized as by Lee and Miller (AER, 2000) in a study of the United States: “it is clear that the consequences of immigration can only be assessed over very long time horizons. Some U.S.‐ born children of immigrants arriving today will still be alive 130 years from now” and “the overall fiscal consequences of ...immigration [are] quite small and should not be a major consideration for policy...100,000 more immigrants per year would initially raise taxes for nonimmigrants, and later reduce them, by amounts less than 1 percent of current tax levels”. That number of immigrants, by the way, represents about 0.33% of the US population in 2000 – a proportion similar to the annual immigration flow in most advanced countries today.

An international survey of the annual fiscal impact of immigrants, including economic migrants, family reunification and refugees (OECD, 2013) in 2007‐2009 concluded that there 29 United States Academy of Sciences Report on Immigration, 2017