Quote:
Originally Posted by SenorKeeed
Axioms like "open borders"?
But non-snarkily, the most compelling argument for Medicare for all is that most (all?) other wealthy countries have implemented a similar system, have better health outcomes and spend less on healthcare. That's a compelling argument! OK. But then apply that same logic to immigration. Do any comparable countries have open borders? Except within the EU, they don't -- and the EU only has open borders among member nations, all of which have similar welfare states and generally relatively similar per capita GDP levels.
There are valid concerns about having a relatively open immigration policy combined with strong welfare programs, but these concerns are almost never brought up in good faith by the right. While you seem to be presenting it in good faith in this post, I don't think I could characterize your concerns over exploitation of immigrants as being brought up in good faith.
Currently we tacitly accept illegal immigrants, allow (mostly rich) people to pay them less than minimum wage without really going after them for breaking minimum wage laws, then require the undocumented immigrants to pay taxes (which about half do) while not allowing them to collect the vast majority of federal benefits, even if they pay taxes. Even legal immigrants have to pay into programs they cannot collect from.
So unless you advocate for wholesale changes to end that exploitation, the only valid question you can ask about immigrant exploitation is whether or not a reform proposal is better or worse than the current system.
With that in mind, accepting far more legal immigrants and granting unlimited temporary work visas (limited only by demand), while actually enforcing minimum wage laws, should greatly reduce the exploitation.
You could then move forward on improving welfare programs with very little concern over "open borders" and come up with a timeline for legal immigrants to get citizenship. In fact, you could even explore whether or not the enforcement of minimum wage and taxing of all those workers could allow you to establish more barebones welfare programs for the documented temporary workers and legal immigrants who are not yet citizens. I have no clue on the numbers, but it could certainly be investigated.
The main downside would be increased labor costs being passed on to consumers, but of course nobody can argue on that basis while also bringing up the evil of worker exploitation.
These tradeoffs, morally and in terms of policy, are why this is such a challenging issue.