i've actually been pretty clear that i support amnesty for illegal immigration. it's legal migration that i think needs some stricter boundaries put around it, particularly regarding refugee inflows and temporary workers.

i will repeat that because it's counter-intuitive: i support illegal immigration, but i think we need stricter boundaries around legal migrants.

there's a caveat, though: we need to better enforce labour laws. that's the bit that gets lost in the immigration debate. immigration isn't really about immigration, it's about the labour department refusing to enforce labour laws - or even creating new categories to evade them. if the labour laws were enforced, nobody would get undercut.

this is why i don't key in on illegal immigrants. i took economics 101; i know that an influx of cheap labour is going to decrease wages. but, i know better than to blame the proletariat, who are just looking to survive. if you just enforced the fucking laws already, you wouldn't have this race to the bottom.

of course, it's not a coincidence that the media sets you at the workers rather than capital. and, it's a sad scene to see the lack of class consciousness that allows these workers to go after the comrades they need to organize with, because the real villains - the bankers, the politicians - have brainwashed them all into fighting each other.

if you want to get behind a concrete political position that will actually address the root causes of the problem, it isn't amnesty and it isn't immigration reform - legal or illegal. it's fighting for the enforcement of labour laws. that means making sure that the law says that all workers deserve a minimum wage and then taking down business owners that refuse to pay it out.  it also means shutting down state-operated programs that are designed to circumvent labour laws.

it means actual socialism, not this do-gooder christian capitalist progressivism that ultimately just upholds the interests of the upper middle classes.

but, i mean, i've read the grapes of wrath. recently, even. you don't need this fancy gramscian machinery. i get it.