Capital doesn't need immigrant workers, but it benefits them if the immigrant workers who do come in are really weak with regard to rights, if they can't participate in politics in any way, they can't fight for better wages, they can't participate in the labor movement - and it means the labor movement is entirely weak. That's what capital wants. Cooperating with capital means giving them that regime. Which yes, is harmful to labor, but it's also harmful to immigrant workers.

Development scholar Suzy Lee explores the material politics of migration in the neoliberal era - beyond the stagnant nativist / humanitarian framework that misses the shifting dynamics of capitalism under globalization and austerity programs, and explains why labor and the left must recognize all workers as workers, and capitalism as the force to be confronted.

Suzy wrote the paper The Case for Open Borders for Catalyst.