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A small town of 1,000 people in Switzerland has been forced to raise taxes after an African refugee and her seven children moved in, costing the town £40,000 in benefits per month.
The Daily Mail reports that Hagenbuch, a small village town in the Swiss canton of Zurich, is spending a third of their entire annual budget on benefits for a family that moved there from Eritrea three years ago.
The paper reports that, “The massive benefits bills covers day-to-day living expenses such as groceries and cleaning costs, as well as paying for four of the woman’s children to be housed in an orphanage and even bills for general entertainment – such as guided tours of local attractions and entry fees to the zoo.”
The family arrived in Switzerland three years ago on a five-year visa with the option of extending her stay beyond even that.
In order to keep up with the cost of their benefits, the town is raising taxes on every resident by 5 percent.
“I don’t know where to turn,” said Mayor Therese Schlaepfer. “I think we have no other choice but to raise taxes.”
The Daily Mail reports that “local residents were justifiably outraged by the spiraling costs of caring for the family, who require a team of social workers to spend six hours a day, six days a week on them alone.”
The paper explains that when the family moved to the town three years ago, the government guaranteed to cover the full cost of their rent and £1,700 in living expenses.
A short time after that, she asked the government for even more financial help, “claiming she had become overwhelmed by family commitments and was now struggling to look after all seven of her children.”
Four of her children were placed in an orphanage, for which the town pays £6,000 per month each, £24,000 total.
On top of that, the social workers that she supposedly needs for six hours per day six days a week cost £90 per hour.


