Pretty big red flag was why so many multinational corporations are pro open borders. Corporations rarely take a stance on political issues unless they have a reason to do so.
In the US there is a particularly pro big business conservative wing of the right that is hyper in favor of unlimited low skill immigration. It's totally at odds with the mainstream conservative position on immigration. So why do they hold that position? It's not out of the kindness of their gentle pro-immigration conservative hearts of course. It's because they want the cheap labor to feed to big business and it helps to suppress wages for all the rest of their workers.
If you go back just 15-20 years ago, the Democrats universally understood this fact of labor supply/demand. Large amounts of low skill labor hurt their middle class and lower class labor voters, hurt their wages. And the Democrats used to be against such vast low skill immigration, because they had a large labor vote to protect. You can see this in action by looking at speeches from decades past (including by still prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders). Their position now? Crickets. They've gone radio silent on the matter vs a few decades ago. That specific labor vote is no longer what they view to be the future, how they are plotting political dominance for the next 50 years.
The more you think about it the worse it gets. It's one thing to be in favor of immigration, it's another thing entirely to be in favor of illegal immigration. The Tyson Chickens of the world love illegal immigrants, they don't file workers comp claims or take you to court if you fail to pay them. Supporting illegal immigration is supporting the creation of a untouchable quasi-slave caste. If immigrants had the same rights, privileges and responsibilities of domestic workers, they probably wouldn't work for such a steep discount. This is why I believe many proported immigration proponents don't ever seem to manage to meaningfully open up the border, that isn't what they are going for.
That's certainly right. One of the big lies in the US today about illegal immigration is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. That has been the same number touted for most of two decades (it's still mindlessly repeated by talking heads on TV).
The real number is now closer to 22 million illegal immigrants, according to a recent Yale study [1]. Representing around 6% of all people in the US. So wait, how are all of those people surviving? They're cheap labor for the big business machine, they're an unprotected cheap labor caste as you correctly point out. They can't complain, they don't have well protected worker rights, and it can take a long time to become a citizen. It's a human rights travesty, and both the big business conservatives and the Democrats (as both are pro open borders) are morally culpable for it.
The rational approach for the US would be to remodel its immigration system as something similar to Canada, focused more on high skill labor. We need to turn off the flood of illegal immigration while simultaneously creating a reasonable citizenship pathway for the 22 million illegal immigrants that are here now (most are never leaving, so the proper thing to do is to provide a citizenship pathway), which would also begin bringing them into the tax base and protecting them as workers.
Or simply relax immigration policies to basically let migrants get work permits, they would argue for a fair wage, and we can let the market decide. From what history says, that's what the US used to be in previous centuries. People came and worked, and grew and made what the US had become before politicians decided to make it harder and harder for migrants to settle legally.
> (including by still prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders)
Bernie only changed his tune after Trump got elected. FWIW, it's always been obvious that more immigration reduces wages for low-skill workers (and everyone I suppose, depending on the volume of immigration). I was always really confused that this was not common knowledge.
Like, Ross Perot ran against Clinton/Bush 1 on pretty much this platform, and that was in the 90's.
