Immigration controls are designed to undermine class solidarity and workers’ power. If you’re in a workplace where a section of the workforce isn’t confident to organise because their status is dependent on sponsorship from an employer, everyone in that workplace is weaker.
That’s one of many reasons why the left-nationalist myths that immigration drives down wages, and that border restrictions are a form of “workers’ control of the labour supply”, are such dangerous nonsense.
I remember a Stalinist Lexiter arguing that ending EU FoM would give us the opportunity to “turn Britain into a giant closed shop”, as if the Tory government was going to implement an immigration policy that made membership of a UK trade union a condition of entry to the country!
The closed shop is a control applied by workers, through our democratic organisations, at the gates of the workplace, as a condition of employment. The border cops aren’t gonna apply it for us at Dover and Heathrow, lads.
