Government smear machine chugging at full steam.
The report that immigration costs 700 million euros a year is sending the (self anointed) political elite into spin mode. So a report is cooked up to counter Samuli Salminen’s calculations, but it’s not based on all the facts that he was privy to, and includes demographics that shouldn’t have been included in order to skew the results.
NOTE: I only publish Salminen’s response to the smear charges, since Koponen’s claims are not based on the entirety of the information that was available to Salminen’s research.
Finns Party immigration report author accused of trickery
Information design expert Juuso Koponen has accused the author of the recent controversial report on immigrants’ alleged net worth of twisting the facts. Koponen’s findings are the complete opposite of researcher Samuli Salminen’s calculations.
[…]
Divergent findings, researcher unfazed
Salminen says he does not accept the accuracy of Koponen’s critique. Salminen says he has only compared the differences between people of working age.
“It’s only sensible to compare working age people to other working age people, not to involve people outside of that age group,” Salminen says. “My most significant findings are from people aged 20—62. Involving any other demoraphics was just a try-out.”
The Suomen Perusta report claimed that immigration rakes up costs of some 700 million euros to the country.
Koponen also presents his own findings, based on the Finns Party’s calculations that include the country’s entire adult population.
These results were the completely opposite of Salminen’s research, showing instead that immigrants bring the economy greater gains than so-called ethnic Finns. Koponen found that workers who moved to Finland from abroad accrue costs of around 5,800 euros annually, while ethnic Finns bring losses of more than 7,000 euros.
Samuli Salminen says he is very skeptical of Koponen’s findings, and will not budge from behind his own research.
“You have to remember, I’ve used a register that outside persons do not have access to,” Salminen says. “Koponen also made the mistake of including working-age and non-working-age people.”
