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What's missing IMO from the analysis, and also renders the China comparison misleading, is any reference to nations or national sovereignty. The policies of any left party operate *within* nations not *between* nations. Immigration is a challenge to that.
Jonathan, being an economist, tends to simply ignore or assume away national attachments, and other forms of identity attachments, which are seldom taken seriously by those in his discipline. It is one of their major errors.
No welfare or redistribution scheme on the scale of modern welfare states has ever existed except within nation-states. There is a reason for that. People are willing to redistribution within the national ingroup they identify with. Far less willing to redistribute outside it.
This is why Jonathan's critique, and much of the analysis of the left's issues with immigration, rests on a category error. They treat migrant and native labour as identical. But migrants and natives are not seen as identical in any other part of politics or policy.
Now, it may be objected that this isn't how things should be. And, sure, redistribution of income, jobs etc to reduce international or global inequalities is a worthy goal. But there's no votes in it.
In the world as it stands now, open migration systems with extensive rights for migrants are a political challenge to left parties because a substantial part of the left's electorate favours redistribution *within* the nation but does not favour redistribution *beyond* it.
