I disagree with him on A LOT of things...especially immigration.
This is most likely because you've made the mistake of believing the corporate media, DNC, and RNC.
I'll concede that there are plenty of studies indicating that immigration is great for us economically but you need to concede that there is a STRONG pull for those studies. Academics who "prove" that immigration is good for us get grants, book deals, invites to national news shows, etc. Any academic whose studies prove the opposite gets called racist and effectively blacklisted.
The studies "proving" that immigration is a net positive economically are the best BS money can buy and there is a LOT of money involved.
What opened my eyes:
Here in Medina, Ohio our local courts pay a not insignificant amount of money EVERY month for translators for indigent non-english-speaking criminal defendants. When I learned that, I was shocked because this is a relatively affluent community with a miniscule immigrant population.
Per
world population review, Ohio's percentage of foreign born population is only 5%, 14th lowest among the 50 states and by far the lowest among populous states.
Then, per
Cleveland.com (Plain Dealer website), Medina City and County have miniscule foreign born populations of just 2.3% and 2.8% respectively.
If Medina, with our miniscule immigrant population has so much crime committed by non-english-speaking indigent criminals that they need translators EVERY month then how bad is the problem nationally? To ask the question is to know the answer, the problem is massive.
Beyond crime, there are the other economic impacts. Since our country operates at a significant budget deficit it is plainly obvious that all of those below the average are paying less in taxes than they are receiving in services. Thus, any immigrant earning below the national average is a net drain on economic resources.
The other catastrophic economic impact is on Social Security and Medicare. Those born in the US pay into both out of every paycheck they receive from their first McDonald's paycheck at age 14 to their last WalMart greeter paycheck in retirement. Even at that, both systems are comically underfunded so an immigrant who arrives after part of their working life has already passed will be a drain on Social Security and Medicare as well, unless they make a LOT of money.
Finally competition:
While our country has labor shortages in certain professions, we most certainly do NOT have a shortage of unskilled labor. Letting in Doctors, Professors, Engineers, and Programmers is one thing (and might actually be a net economic positive) but letting in unskilled laborers only increases the competition for already scarce jobs and dramatically increases income inequality.
Back when he actually cared about American Workers, Bernie Sanders called Open Borders a "Koch Brothers idea" because it makes everybody in America
Bernie Sanders called Open Borders a "Koch Brothers idea" because it makes everybody in America poorer.
Open borders are great, at least temporarily, for the Ultra-Wealthy. They get cheaper servants and employees and they get to push the externalities off on the rest of us.
For the upper middle class, massive immigration is at best a wash. They get somewhat cheaper services but their taxes and/or the government deficits go up.
For the great majority, massive immigration is a slow-motion catastrophe.
Here is a
typical on-narrative corporate media article where they explan that SoCal Construction work went from a great job in 1980* to a crappy one in 2017 (date of publication). They then blame lack of union representation while sticking their fingers in their ears and ignoring WHY those workers don't have Unions anymore.
Unions only succeed if the laborers can't be easily replaced. In that case striking workers have to be given concessions to keep them around. When there are PLENTY of replacement workers available the high-pay Union outfits get undercut by low-wage outfits.
*In the article they state that the construction workforce in 1980 was about 2/3 White and later they have a graph that says it was about 24% Hispanic. They don't mention anyone else or explain the other ~10% but it was probably mostly Black with a few Asians. Today it is ~70% Hispanic and they don't tell us the makeup of the other ~30%.
Gee, I wonder where all the high paid White and Black construction workers went.