Around the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they’re actually the only way for progressivism to flourish?
That the era of low immigration was also the era of progressive triumph is no coincidence. […] The United States felt more like a cohesive nation to many voters, with higher levels of social trust and national pride, and politicians were able to enact higher taxes on the rich and new benefits like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The new deal era welfare programs were dismantled during the civil rights era using racism as an excuse, and now that same progress has been pointed to by right-wingers as the cause of all our woes. They got rid of our social safety net because they didn’t want “undesirables” to have access. By retreating on the immigration issue for the sake of rebuilding the social safety net those countries are giving the racists what they wanted all along, and they won’t stop at immigrants.