Bernie Sanders: "Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal"
VoxCited 18× on HN, 2015–2026
interview · general · 2015–2026 on HN
A short clip of Bernie Sanders in conversation with Ezra Klein of Vox, where he rejects open borders as a proposal that serves the Koch brothers. It is an excerpt from a longer interview on global poverty.
HN commenters cite it in immigration debates as evidence of Sanders' 2015 position that open borders and high immigration hurt wages.
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12 comments from Hacker News
@Starman Noam Chomsky is far left and Bernie Sanders is also more liberal than a Democrat. Here is Sanders saying the same thing I did ▶ this video
Noam Chomsky is far left and Bernie Sanders is also more liberal than a Democrat. Here is Sanders saying the same thing I did ▶ this video I’m confused, what do you think a liberal is?
This is basically 100% backwards. In Canada it's large corporate lobbies pushing for more immigration. Why? Because it lets them keep wages low and makes unionization impossible. See also, Bernie 10 years ago: ▶ this video I don't know at what point people were convinced that the push against immigration is some kind of billionaire plot, but is has been great cover for said billionaires.
I don't think that's quite right. I think over the last 10 years a lot of the anti-corporate energy of Occupy Wall Street has been funnelled - by means of the culture war - into "identity" issues that have little potential to harm corporate power or profits. I would argue that this did not originate on the right or left but was the result of a political class that's beholden to endless donations. To me, one really clear example of this is immigration. As recently as 2016, Bernie Sanders was saying that mass immigration is a Koch Brothers strategy for keeping wages low[1]. I think he was right. But the left has been cajoled away from this position over time because it had the potential to harm their corporate donors. [1] ▶ this video
This topic reminds me of the old interview Bernie Sanders gave nearly a decade ago. ▶ this video I hope citizens wake up, business interests are not always aligned with your (citizen) economic interest. It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal immigration, there are economic realities that we should talk about - stop focusing on the color of someones skin.
This policy needs a refresh - there are many issues with the H1B program today - a good article if you're interested: link We should be wary billionaires are controlling these policies. Bernie Sanders did this interview a decade ago and he was right, unchecked immigration is not in the economic interest of the working class. ▶ this video
Here is Bernie in 2015 saying against open borders saying it was a rightwing proposal: ▶ this video link Now he's fully onboard with open border policies. He doesn't even have the same message he did 5 years ago. Just like his twitter history shows him tweeting about evil millionaires and billionaires until he became a millionaire himself and now only targets billionaires.
> There are immigrants in Europe. If you look at European countries individually there is massive immigration between them, as well as immigration from outside. And yet. And yet in almost no country has the original population almost become a minority, unlike the US. So clearly the cumulative net immigration is greater in the US. And Bernie Sanders (someone who has certainly applied the "least amount of reflection" to this) seems to share the GPs view: ▶ this video
> I find it difficult to believe that a pro-trade union candidate like Bernie Sanders does not understand the basic laws of supply/demand: How a supply of cheap labour affects the wages of the individual employee. This interview would indicate that he understands that, and wants to restrict immigration for that very reason: ▶ this video Edit: The interview is from 2015, so it may be that his understanding has 'evolved' since.
One of the illustrative point is also that some present day Democrat presidential candidates and legislators just 4-5 years ago were against increased immigration and open borders. Listen to what Sanders has to say about "open borders": ▶ this video he is not just slightly against it, he is quite upset by the idea altogether.
That's not the same as against borders - see e.g. international trade, or tourism. Socialism today seems to agree with borders ( ▶ this video ), and back then, there was national socialism...
Older family friend made $30/hr in the 60-70s with pension and benefits working in a meat packing plant with a high school education. Same job today pays $15/hr with no benefits thanks to illegal immigration. There's a reason people like the Koch brothers spend millions in support of illegal immigration, they wanted to drive down the labor cost for jobs like the above. ▶ this video Offshoring and illegal immigration has killed low skill jobs and given billion dollar multinational corporations the ability to demand whatever they want from workers because they have unlimited labor supply. This doesn't just effect low skill labor either, it forces more people to go to college and take on debt which then drives down the wages of high skill work as well. It's a scam and the american people should be angry