Two Danish politicians shared Finance Ministry figures on X presenting what immigrants cost society. Experts said the numbers rest on a 2019 calculation and cannot be read as current costs.
DR reported on August 20, 2026 that Mikkel Bjørn, immigration and integration spokesperson for the Danish People’s Party, listed a series of figures in a post on X. According to DR, the post stated that an immigrant from Somalia costs society 180,000 kroner, and that total expenses for immigrants and descendants from the so-called MENAPT countries reach 33.6 billion kroner a year.
Bjørn wrote that Denmark should not accept that failed immigration policy sends billion-kroner bills to the public year after year. Mads Strange, political spokesperson for Liberal Alliance, also used the same figures, calling them completely new and completely crazy, DR reports.
Jacob Nielsen Arendt, research professor and head of labor market and integration research at the Rockwool Foundation, told DR the numbers cannot be interpreted that way. He said the calculations are based on the group’s employment rate and use of public services in 2019, which has changed markedly since then.
Carl-Johan Dalgaard, professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen and a member of the Economic Councils’ chairmanship, pointed to the same problem. As reported by DR, he said much has happened to the labor force since the coronavirus pandemic, including for immigrants, and that revenues have probably strengthened. He concluded that the figures should not be treated as precise.
Where the figures come from
The calculations stem from a written reply from the Ministry of Finance to the Folketing’s Immigration and Integration Committee, dated August 11, 2026. The reply itself states that the accounting is not necessarily representative of the net contribution after 2019. It also says the figures cannot be taken as an expression of the expected net contribution in 2026.
Arendt said a milder claim, that the group probably produces a deficit, would likely have been correct. According to DR, he criticized the politicians for stressing the size of the figure and comparing it with other possible public spending.
Bjørn told DR he is citing the most recent figures available on the area, and that he refuses to avoid a debate because newer ones do not exist. He said a new report on the consequences of immigration should be produced every year, but that instruction authority lies with the minister, not with him.
Strange did not give an interview, DR reports, but said in a written comment that he uses the same accounting method DR itself applied in earlier coverage of the topic. He noted that calculating net contributions takes a large apparatus, so figures for a given year are only ready several years later.
Similar Finance Ministry calculations have been reported before. Altinget covered figures on immigrants’ and descendants’ net contributions in February 2025, as background to the same type of calculation.
