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Since I was tagged, I'll just reiterate what I've written before: the key here is distinguishing between labor-related and humanitarian-related immigration (and distinguishing between these two forms is very common, right now the Finnish liberal-right and conservative-right parties are fighting in the government negotiations about both of these categories as separate instance, apparently coming to a compromise where humanitarian-immigration rules will be tightened but labor-immigration rules probably at least partially loosened).
When it comes to labor-related immigration, it is of course of major relevance what the actual net financial contribution is, and differences vary greatly in analysis over that level. However, labor-related immigration in Europe mostly nowadays comes outside of the MENA area; a lot of it comes from other European countries (MENA and non-MENA), another major part comes from countries like Thailand and Philippines.
However, when it comes to the categories of immigrants most associated with crime, welfare dependency etc, the main reason why they come to Europe is through humanitarian mechanisms, and there the big issue why they are permitted to come is not related to their financial and societal contribution but the maintenance of the actually existing treaty framework underpinning the current world order and that forms the ideological underpinning for the West's current effort to stay on top of that world order.
That doesn't think that financial matters, crime etc. are unimportant; they, and the populist reaction they lead to, are a major part of the reason why many European countries have tightened their interpretion of the asylum/refugee laws. However, insofar as this debate goes, it should at least be understood why the general asylum/refugee policies still continue, and the reason is the human rights treaty framework and is role in the maintenance of the idea of a global community.
One might disagree with that need, one might (especially now) consider the global community to be broken already - I believe that these arguments will get stronger year by year and will bolster right-wing parties in Europe and elsewhere. Still, my opinion continues to be that the idea has enough legs that the framework, including asylum treaties, should be maintained.
Certainly, if the last year's events in Ukraine have started developments chipping away at the idea of a global community in general, they have provided a very specific example of a fact that, even in Europe, wars precipitating vast refugee situations might happen; many Ukrainians have probably been saved and helped by the fact that Europe has developed policies and practices to take in vast numbers of refugees and facilitate, at least in some ways, the integration.
But if a MENA refugee is projected to cost the state, say 100k, while a ukrainian or north korean refugee costs 10k or even nothing, you can help far more of the latter group for the same cost. So even in a purely humanitarian framework, to maximize asylum we should discriminate.
When it comes to the framework, it's not a question of a monetary cost-benefit analysis. It's about the problem posed by asylum seekers themselves; if someone comes from, say, Syria, and says that they're an opposition activist and they can't go back because if they do then Assad's goons kills them on the spot, what do you do?
He might be lying, he might be a terrorist, he might be a common criminal, he might in many cases actually not be from Syria at all etc., but if we want the framework to hold, we must at least allow for a possibility that he is actually telling the truth (after all, Syria continues to be in some sort of a state of civil war and Assad continues to be, at the very least, a strongman authoritarian whose goons have indeed killed people), in which case he would indeed be entitled to asylum. If he is just summarily sent back, the framework is broken, and taking in some other guy from Ukraine won't fix it.
Of course, there's a whole process where we try to deduce what the actual truth status is and if the asylum criteria are met, but that takes time, and some arrangement must be found for him in the meantime.
If you assume there is a limited number of resources (reasonable assumption), you will always run afoul of the pie-in-the-sky framework. Ideally, every legitimate asylum seeker should get one, and every human should live in freedom, peace and abundance. But since we live on earth and not paradise, we might want to remember the limit and save more of those that can be saved. The likely liar/criminal/terrorist is just shit out of luck.
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