There’s No “Leftist” Case Against Immigration
Capital freely crosses borders — people should too.
News about the thousands of Haitian refugees at the Texas border has dominated the national conversation in the past week. On the margins of the standard mainstream discourse about immigration reform, there has been a parallel discussion on the left about abolishing borders altogether. When radical publishing house Haymarket Books posted a tweet calling for border abolition, it sparked some controversy.
While this statement got a fairly positive response from most leftists, there was some pushback from conservatives, liberals — and even some self-identified socialists.
One person wrote that open borders “provide the bosses with an endless supply of strike-breaking labor. Not a smart move.”
This is a minority position on the left, but it still crops up often enough to merit a response.
It’s an appeal to leftist ideas like workers' rights and class struggle. And the people who take up this position consider themselves…
