US Immigration and Border Security Thread

[Montmorency]

@ Hussar You're a socialist right? Why aren't you on board with the older socialist/communist idea that immigration is just a tool of the capitalists to undermine the strength of trade unions and prevent reforms from ever happening? Doesn't this "reserve army of labour/Industrielle Reservearmee" prevent the achievement of socialist goals by allowing the capitalists to keep wages depressed and workers vulnerable?

I can't speak to how prevalent this position was a century ago,

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indust...s_of_the_World

(I think one of our Orgah socialists, the late Horetore, subscribed to the IWW general model)

but an international labor movement recognizes solidarity between workers, i.e. capitalists will exploit them no matter where they are, and keeping them in one place or out of another won't help the situation.

So a socialist argument would call for the removal of preconditions that permit any employer to wield immigration against labor conditions, or foment scaremongering about the social ills of immigration as right-wing agitprop. This would especially make sense in an age when capital and capitalists are fully international, governments are captured by a neoliberal consensus, and unionism and other configurations of labor power are on the retreat in most if not all contexts (all but defeated in the US).

Practically speaking then for the US, shutting out immigrant labor in manual and unskilled work or trades would not raise wages for US workers, but rather would lower consumer standards on the supply-side and either force most such employers to fully off-shoring their business, or solidifying an ultra-poor domestic workforce to maintain it here. Low standards for immigrant labor in fact shields domestic labor from the same treatment. It would be foolish to think that the absence of immigrant labor would spur the government to raise standards and protections for the whole workforce, rather than lowering them.

[a completely inoffensive name]

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