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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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