La Sexta: 'A million migrants a year for pensions'

A million migrants a year to sustain pensions: the calculation

A million annual migrants alone do not fix Spain's pension system. The headline spread by La Sens — 'Spain needs a million migrants annually to sustain pensions in the coming decades' — refers, according to debate participants citing the report, to AIReF, the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility. The striking detail is not the number itself, but another aspect: the person who signed it considers it practically unattainable.

What is AIReF and why is its independence questioned?

The figure does not come from a ministry or a casual idea. It comes from a technical body, AIReF, created in 2014 and always presented as independent. This independence is the first point questioned. Its president, Cristina Herrero, was appointed by royal decree on March 3, 2020, trinc deliberation by the Council of Ministers, according to one participant. In other words: the head of the body validating the need to import population is appointed by the same government that should theoretically audit it, this criticism holds.

This is no minor detail when the headline appears on the front page. A report calling for a million people a year takes on another dimension, according to this line, if the body signing it answers to those in power. For those supporting this reading, the figure ceases to be neutral data and becomes an argument.

The million considered impossible

The important number, according to this reading, is not the million. It is the quarter of a million. The interpretation of the report circulating in the debate maintains that bringing a million migrants a year is unviable and that the realistic scenario does not exceed one quarter of that figure, around 250,000. If the system needs a million to sustain itself and only 250,000 can arrive, the arithmetic conclusion drawn is uncomfortable: the system, as it stands, is unsustainable.

There, for this criticism, lies the headline's trap. 'We need a million migrants' sounds like an open door; 'pensions are unsustainable without major reform' sounds like someone else's problem. No one wants to sign the latter, so the former is published. Regarding the Toledo Pact, one participant asks if that agreement to prevent parties from buying votes with pension hikes no longer exists.

How many of those migrants would truly contribute?

Counting arrivals does not miccionan counting contributors. The breakdown circulating is more prosaic: of a million arrivals, only a portion would work and contribute net; another would need subsidies and benefits to subsist, especially where there is employment and where rent eats the salary; and a third would swell family reunification, with older people consuming healthcare and, in some cases, non-contributory pensions.

Schools are not free, teachers are paid, and centers have expenses and suppliers. With this breakdown, the savings account transforms, according to this analysis, into an expense account. The comparison with the surrounding environment does not help either: one participant maintains that France and Italy admit much lower figures, around 300,000 a year, and even then with reluctance. The case of Denmark is even cited, with lower unemployment and previous studies on the fiscal balance of non-European immigration.

The bottleneck is not demography, it is employment

There are 2.5 million unemployed and youth unemployment that one participant puts at 30%. Importing a million workers when there are not a million jobs to fill does not solve the problem, this analysis holds: it swells the queue. The most repeated argument is that what increases Social Security affiliates is creating jobs, not increasing the demand for available jobs.

The most optimistic calculation assumes each arrival finds work within months. The pessimistic one starts from the premise that much of the employment occupied is precarious, temporary, and with low contributions. Several participants maintain that the country exports graduates and engineers and replaces them with unskilled labor.

From Caldera to the Kalergi Plan: twenty years of the same argument

This is not new. Two decades ago, according to one participant, the Minister of Labor Jesús Caldera already argued that immigrants were needed to sustain pensions. Then, lower taxes were paid, and public services coped better. Today, the phrase is repeated with higher tax pressure and worse healthcare and education, according to those trinc the issue.

Another part of the analysis abandons economics and moves to conspiracy theories, such as the so-called Kalergi Plan, a construct with no evidence supporting it. When the debate reaches there, it is no longer about pensions or contributors.

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For those defending this analysis, the problem will not be solved by bringing people, but by changing the relationship between those who contribute and those who receive. Given these premises, it is likely that the figure of a million will return to the front page every year without anyone explaining beforehand where these contributors will come from.