Julian Burnside had a good opinion piece in The Age today about asylum seekers (“You’ve been misled on boat people: here are the facts“).

Julian supports in-community processing of asylum seekers, as he says:

While their refugee status is being determined, they should be required to live in designated rural or regional areas: there are plenty of country towns that would be happy to receive them and benefit from their arrival.

But he doesn’t explain quite why country towns (or any area for that matter) should be happy to receive asylum seekers. The answer is interesting because it addresses another myth about asylum seekers – that giving them welfare payments is unfair and a kind of free handout.

Ignoring any warm and fuzzy feelings derived from helping others, communities would benefit from receiving asylum seekers simply because they would spend any welfare payments within the community, on housing, food, clothing etc. In other words, what most people might see as overly generous ‘cash handouts’ to asylum seekers would in reality just benefit property investors and supermarkets, among others.

At the moment, the biggest pecuniary beneficiaries of our approach to processing asylum seekers are groups like Serco and their suppliers who hold contracts to manage detention centres.

By contrast, in-community processing would distribute benefits more widely to businesses small and large around Australia.

Bernard Keane discussed the high cost of detention policies. He reported that facilities in Naura cost as much as $1 billion over 5 years.

If for no other reason than self interest, businesses around Australia should be more actively promoting in-community processing. It would spread the economic benefits of our asylum seeker policies much more broadly and provide a more humane treatment for people fleeing persecution.