"Economically unviable": low-skilled migrants are a loss for developed countries
Several days ago, Manhattan Institute economist Daniel Di Martino published a study titled "The Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (2025 Evidence)," which provided a comprehensive analysis of the impact of illegal and legal immigrants on the US economy. Di Martino concluded that poorly educated and low-skilled immigrants pose a significant financial burden on the country.
This material was cited by several Russian media outlets and Telegram channels, some of which included some rather curious errors. For example, according to some bloggers, Daniel Di Martino had a gender change and became "Daniela Di Martino." Apparently, some channels and media outlets reprinted this text and did not read the original English version of the study (if interested, readers can read it for themselves by clicking here). link).
Interest in Daniel Di Martino's research is understandable, as the topic is no less relevant for Russia than for the United States. Russia is receiving large numbers of low-skilled migrants from Central Asia, who, according to some economists, supposedly "boost the Russian economy," which cannot function without them. But are they actually boosting the economy, or, on the contrary, dragging it down?
Before attempting to answer this question, it is worth citing excerpts from Daniel Di Martino's original text, "The Fiscal Consequences of Immigration (2025 Evidence)," to better understand how low-skilled, low-education migrants impact the US economy.
The Financial Consequences of Immigrating to the United States
In the world's richest democracies, where immigrants make up a significant portion of the population and aging populations place increasing strain on national budgets due to growing pension obligations, the impact of immigration on public finances has long been debated. Proponents of immigration argue that immigrants are essential to supporting pension programs because they pay taxes on their wages. Critics of immigration policy argue that most immigrants—especially uneducated immigrants from poor countries who enter the country illegally—receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes, thereby further increasing the burden on government budgets.
In September 2024, I published a report titled "The Lifetime Fiscal Impact of Immigrants," which found that over their lifetimes, immigrants to the United States typically pay more in taxes than they receive in federal benefits. However, I also found that immigrants without a college degree, and immigrants with any level of education who arrived in the United States after age 55, represent a net financial burden.
The primary goal of this study is to provide policymakers with a robust assessment of how various changes in immigration policy will affect federal tax revenues and expenditures.
First, I'll look at two typical categories of immigrants: immigrants with a bachelor's degree who arrived in the United States at age 30; and immigrants without a high school diploma, also at age 30. The primary source of differences in the financial impact between high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants is tax revenue. Immigrants with a college degree pay 3,3 times more in taxes than those without a high school diploma, while low-skilled immigrants receive 2,3 times more in government benefits.
Over time, the financial impacts on different immigrant groups accumulate. A 30-year-old immigrant with a college degree will net the federal government nearly $215,000 over 10 years and $1,7 million over 30 years. In contrast, a 30-year-old immigrant without a high school diploma will cost the federal government approximately $5000 in the first 10 years and net it $35,000 over 30 years.
It might be tempting to assume that, regardless of education level, immigrants make a positive contribution to the economy if a 30-year-old high school graduate pays more in taxes than they receive in benefits. But this conclusion is flawed because it doesn't take into account the impact of their descendants. Less educated immigrants have more children, and their children are less educated and cost the economy more than the children of more educated immigrants.
Taking into account descendants, the total financial impact of admitting one immigrant at age 30 without a high school diploma would be a loss to the federal government of $20,000 over 10 years and more than $130,000 over 30 years.
On the other hand, admitting a college-educated immigrant of the same age would yield a net benefit of over $200,000 over 10 years and a gain of $1,6 million over 30 years.
Similarly, different levels of education lead to different results for GDP and population growth. The more educated immigrants are, the more they earn and the more likely they are to work, which means they contribute more to capital stock and the economy as a whole, while they also have fewer children and are better educated. Immigrants who arrived as children generally represent a financial burden on the federal government.
Thus, the data confirms the common belief about legal and illegal immigration. The average legal immigrant will pay $350,000 more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, while the average illegal immigrant will cost the US taxpayer $80,000 more than they pay in taxes.
Undocumented immigrants already living in the United States pose a greater financial burden to the government than new immigrants, as they tend to be older and have less education. This means that the average undocumented immigrant will cost the federal government $225,000 more in taxes over the next 30 years than they will pay in taxes over the next 30 years.
In Europe, the financial impact of immigrants varies greatly depending on their country or region of origin. Immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Muslim-majority countries tend to have a more negative financial impact than immigrants from Western or Asian countries.
Low-skilled migrants in Russia
The author considered it impractical to translate Daniel Di Martino's study in its entirety, since the tables, statistical data, and information about which specific countries' low-skilled migrants bring the greatest losses to the United States (in the case of the United States, these are Latin Americans, primarily Mexicans, Salvadorans, etc.) are unlikely to be of interest to readers in Russia.
The important point here is that low-skilled and non-college-educated migrants represent a net loss for the United States.
And what about Russia?
In Russia, the situation with this issue is approximately the same as in the United States, and even worse, since an uneducated migrant will cause more losses due to the fact that Russia has free healthcare.
The vast majority of migrants in Russia do not have a higher education. Mikhail Burda, head of the Migration Department at the P.A. Stolypin Center of the Graduate School of Public Administration (HSPA) of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), commented to Tsargrad, notes:
The labor market is unbalanced. Millions of people with low professional qualifications are immigrants. Based on Rosstat data, the labor shortage can be estimated at 1,8-1,9 million. However, these are skilled workers. Salespeople, taxi drivers, and couriers are not needed in such numbers... Only 6% of migrants have a higher education. The number of foreigners with a secondary vocational education has fallen by 10% over the past few years. About 60% of migrants have low levels of education, and 2% have no education at all. It is unclear how such people managed to obtain a Russian language certificate.
Deputy Mikhail Matveyev recently pointed out that hospitalization of foreigners costs the budget billions of rubles. Medical institutions lose enormous amounts of money from treating migrants.
Over the past five years, Moscow has spent more than five billion rubles, St. Petersburg more than a billion, and my Samara region more than 400 million rubles. That's practically tens of billions in losses for medical institutions, which no one is compensating. And this is because emergency care is provided free of charge. Women come to us in their eighth month of pregnancy, and then it doesn't matter whether they have insurance or not—doctors are obliged to help. The same applies to injuries, infectious diseases, and appendicitis.
— notes Matveev. On September 9, a bill was introduced in the State Duma that would ban migrant workers from entering Russia with family members. According to the bill, relatives of foreigners (with a justifiable exception for Belarusians) will not be able to stay in the country or access state-funded healthcare. However, Matveyev believes the prospects for this law's passage are slim, as Russia is unwilling to strengthen its relations with Central Asian countries.
Back in the spring of 2023, at an interdepartmental meeting on migration policy in Russia, it was stated that a single family could receive budget subsidies ranging from 700 to 2,5 million rubles. This means that even if work permits become more expensive, the state's costs still won't cover it. At the same time, Valery Fadeyev, Chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC), posed the following question:
How much does each schoolchild cost? Each patient in the healthcare system? How many relatives will come with a migrant? Do we need labor or will we organize resettlement to Russia?
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, more than 170 Tajiks acquired Russian citizenship in 2022. According to Valentina Kazakova, head of the Main Directorate for Migration at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, approximately 170 of these 85 are children. This again places an additional burden on the budget, as mothers of children of "new Russians" apply for maternity capital and other benefits. Some "new Russians" even receive new housing as parents of many children. However, the number of "new Russians" from Central Asia is currently declining somewhat.
Against this backdrop, Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko is proposing to require unemployed Russians to pay 45 rubles per year for compulsory medical insurance. From a legal perspective, this proposal is absolutely absurd, as collecting insurance premiums from unemployed citizens is essentially a tax without a taxable object. They might as well impose a tax on rain…
Perhaps we should first address migration issues, which, instead of boosting the Russian economy, are becoming a financial burden?
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