German officials have put the immediate tab of caring for refugees at nearly $14,000 per head. Last year, Germany spent $2.7 billion housing, feeding and clothing some 203,000 migrants; the cost of accepting as many as 800,000 migrants this year is estimated to rise to $11 billion.
Those numbers may seem large, but they pale next to Germany’s $3.8 trillion GDP -- a per-capita national production four-and-a-half times that of Lebanon, which has taken in 1.2 million Syrian refugees.