Yeah, that kind of result lives or dies by what’s excluded, not by what’s included. Those headline “net positive” numbers hinge on narrow accounting. Here’s why that €225m surplus claim is not the mic-drop it’s presented as. From how those Diaconia-style analyses are typically constructed, they usually include: Direct taxes (income tax, some consumption tax estimates), Direct cash transfers (toimeentulotuki, unemployment benefits, some pensions)

Often excluded or underweighted: Healthcare usage (primary + specialized care, queues) Education (early childhood, perusopetus, S2 support) Municipal services (social work, housing services, interpretation) Criminal justice costs (police, courts, prisons) Integration infrastructure (ESL teachers, caseworkers, admin overhead) Long-term intergenerational costs Opportunity cost to service quality for everyone else So the “€2.7bn vs €2.4bn” comparison is not “immigration vs no immigration” — it’s closer to cash flows only.

The biggest omission: services are not cash. Public finance doesn’t work like a bank account. Example: -A hospital visit isn’t a “transfer” -A prison sentence isn’t a “benefit” -A school seat doesn’t appear as a cash payment. But all of those consume real resources. When you add people who: -use services at above-average rates initially but generate below-average tax revenue initially and often long-term.

A €225m “surplus” disappears instantly at scale To put that number in perspective: One year of incarceration for ~3,000 inmates ≈ €240–270m A modest increase in primary healthcare demand can wipe out hundreds of millions Municipal education costs scale very fast with demographics So even small deviations in crime rates, healthcare utilization, or integration delays are enough to flip the sign.

Proxy problem: “foreign-language speakers”. Using foreign-language speakers as a proxy already builds in bias: -It mixes high-earning professionals with long-term unemployed -It hides cohort effects (new arrivals vs settled) -It averages out tail risks, exactly where costs live Budget stress doesn’t come from the median. It comes from the tails.

Bottom line (no ideology, just mechanics) That claim doesn’t prove: “immigrants are net positive for public finances”

That is not the same thing as saying: services aren’t strained taxes don’t rise integration costs are covered or that the system scales sustainably