The economics of refugee policy

Let’s see if you can guess whose refugee policy this is:

• Multiculturalism is a myth.
  
• We are at risk of being swamped by undocumented immigrants.
  
• Government is impotent to stop these people.
  
• The only solution is to turn the boats back.

Is it Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison or Julia Gillard? No, it is Marine Le Pen, doyenne of the French Right and leading light of the National Front, the daughter of a man who counts Adolf Hitler as one of his heroes. Marine Le Pen, the woman who is riding a wave of bigotry and racism in France to try to capture the presidency for herself and for her radical views.

However, it could have been Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison or even Julia Gillard in election mode, couldn’t it?

Sadly, the right in Australia is now closer to policy positions adopted by neo-Fascist parties than it is to traditional conservative or liberal positions.  Many have tried to shift the Abbotts and the Morrisons from their populist position on this issue, arguing that we are legally and morally obligated to accept refugees, as indeed we are. Those arguments have failed, alas.

So, here is a different argument, an argument based on economics, rather than law or morality. The argument is simple: Australia needs refugees more than the refugees need Australia. Why is that, you may ask?

We know that we need more workers than we can produce through natural population growth. That has been our reality for over sixty years and the need is now greater, as our population ages.

We have been bringing in migrants, from an increasingly broad range of locations, and that has helped. However, migration programs are costly and those who come here voluntarily tend to want to live and work where they choose, rather than where they are needed. This means that there are gaps in the workforce that arise merely because people do not want to go where the work is.

Here is my solution. Arriving on our shores every month are boatloads of mostly young people who have shown considerable ingenuity, intelligence and persistence – otherwise they would not be here – and many of whom are trained and qualified – training and qualifications for which we in Australia have not paid. Nor have we paid for their travel to come here. Moreover, there are many children and young people on these boats, who arrive here having completed at least part of their education. Again, we have not had to pay a cent for their primary or secondary schooling, have we?

All these people have chosen Australia and are keen, nay they are desperate to be here to be with us, to work with us, to build new lives and to bring forth new generations of Australians, as the Irish, English, Italians, Greeks and Vietnamese, among others, have already done.

We know from past experience that, these new arrivals and their children will be over-represented in educational institutions and in the workforce and under-represented in prisons and in crime statistics. We know that the second and third generations will be more Australian than those who think of themselves as the real Australians, barracking for footy clubs, scoffing vegemite sandwiches and driving Holden Commodores  – or should it be Toyotas now?

We know all this and yet we keep these people who are potentially capable of making a great contribution to our collective wealth and well being behind bars – at great expense to us, I might say.

Do you know that we spend over a billion dollars each year on detention centres and on the apparatus needed to protect our borders? Oh and how Orwellian is that statement – to protect our borders. Protect them from whom – and why?

These people mean us no harm – they just want the chance to build a new life here. And if you not an aborigine here – and few of us are – is that not what your ancestors wanted too?

So, if we want to acquire new hard working Australians who would probably be willing to spend two years working and living where they are sent – before they are given the choice to go where they will – let us open the gates of the detention centres and let them out. And let’s spend the billions of dollars we spend on keeping them locked up to support cities and towns to build new infrastructure to accommodate their (and our) needs.

The evidence is that immigration programs, despite their cost, have repaid us and the nation many times over for our investment. Since refugee arrivals cost us very little – once we stop wasting money locking them up – the economic rate of return is likely to be even higher.

So, Messrs Abbott and Morrison and Mesdames Le Pen and Gillard, if the law, morality and ethics do not persuade you, consider the economics – open the gates and let our people out…and enjoy the economic benefits.