Dan La Botz has written an extensive piece on Open Borders in the DSA publication Socialist Forum. I want to critique some parts of his arguments.
His piece is Ten Arguments for Open Borders, the Abolition of ICE, and an Internationalist Labor Movement (Fall 2019) Responses
La Botz is well informed in this field and makes the best case for open borders. However, the conclusions do not necessarily follow from his arguments. In my view, he is about 80 % correct . At the same time, we should not assume that Open Borders is the only correct plan for the left, nor that it is feasible. We need clarity on these issues in order to build our movement. And we should be aware that the Charles C.Koch Foundation, Milton Friedman, and others Right wing economists support Open Borders.
At the same time, most of organized labor, most of the major Civil Rights organizations, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party- ie. the Sanders campaign, do not support open borders. We should understand why.
La Botz’s descriptions of the economy and the political forces, and his analysis are very well informed. The conclusions he draws from this work go beyond the arguments he makes. I do not have the time to go through each of the arguments in detail. His is a substantive piece. I can only point out some of the problem areas.
1. It is true that DSA at the August convention endorsed open borders. Open borders is the policy of DSA. Not all of us agree.
In 2018 I described some of these contradictions in a piece Toward a Socialist Perspective on Immigration on Democratic Left. I am unable to locate that piece now, The DL archives have had some disruption.
A related piece was posted as Steps Toward a Labor Perspective on Immigration on the North Star blog.
Here is an excerpt.
“It Is Not About Open Borders
In the article, “The Left Case against Open Borders”, writer Angela Nagel gets some of the economic conditions correct, but like Trump, she argues without evidence that the problem is that unions, the Left and immigrants’ rights activists support “open borders”. Her writing follows from the position in Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders – (2018) by Reihan Salam
Developing a policy on migration for labor and the left is far more complex than presented by Naegel and other writers.
First we must deal with some of the false accusations about the role of unions in the immigration policy debates.
Writer Nagel is wrong in asserting that the left and labor favor open borders. This is accepting the false narrative of Trump and the anti- immigrant forces. .
There has been a long and well developed movement for immigration reform, along with connected policy proposals – few of which argue for open borders. Progressive policies and practices have emerged from within U.S. communities and the labor movement. “
2. I agree with La Botz that ,” We are in a struggle for hearts and minds on the question of immigration, a key issue in U.S. politics today” He then locates the problems in the crisis of 9/11 and austerity policies following the economic crisis of 2008.
While those issues were important, but, anti immigrant hostility was rampant as early as 1994 in the Proposition 187 campaign in California when a Republican governor Pete Wilson gained re- election during a recession by blaming Mexican immigrants for the job losses. Some 55 % of California voters cast their ballots for a harshly anti immigrant measure. Republicans have since been repudiated in California and the state is a Sanctuary State. However, the contents of the California Prop. 187 Save Our State measure became federal policy as a part of the Immigration Refo0rm Act of 1996.
On a national level Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a repressive bill that provided for the construction of fencing along the border and criminalized many factors of immigrant life. Over the decades there were numerous appropriation bills to provide increased funding for the Border Patrol, militarization and fencing of the border. See, Sand and Blood: America’s Deadly Stealth War on the Mexican Border, by John Carlos Frey.
Many of the current repressive actions at the border were made possible by the Trump Administration’s use of this 1996 legislation.
3. La Botz is accurate in describing many of the political forces since 2001. While I can agree with him that the anti immigrant campaigns contribute to capitalist exploitation, I do not agree that Open Borders campaigns will advance the rights of immigrant workers. The DSA International Commission has a number of pieces supporting the position of Open Borders as put forward by La Botz and this position is supported by Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez, among others.
