Want to Raise the Wage, Senator Sanders? Support the Immigration Moratorium.

On April 8, 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders and colleagues introduced the Raise the Wage Act, raising the Federal Minimum Wage to $17 an hour. So, why doesn’t Senator Sanders support other policies with a proven track record for raising wages? It is objectively acknowledged that tight labor markets raise wages. Employers are aware of this and spend a lot of money lobbying Congress to flood the labor market with cheap foreign labor. If you really want to raise the wages of American workers, you must support eliminating—or at least reducing—cheap foreign labor competition. 

Senator Sanders already knows this. Almost a decade ago, he accused the open-borders philosophy of being a Koch Brothers right-wing scheme to defraud and impoverish Americans.  

Senator Sanders also stood up to Elon Musk recently and opposed the H-1B government subsidy to Big Tech paid for off the backs of American tech workers. 

No more room for denial, Senator. Do you really expect us to believe that you think the H-2A visa for Big Ag is somehow different than the H-1B visa for Big Tech? Especially since we know there is extensive documented evidence of slavery and debt bondage in the H-2A program? 

Likewise, Senator Sanders surely is aware that all of the job growth under the Biden Administration went to foreign workers. He even acknowledged the Democratic Party had abandoned the working class. 

Here is a quote from Senator Sanders in 2007, when the Senate was debating the McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill, that I hope to hear from him again real soon:

“What this legislation is not about is addressing the real needs of American workers. It is not about raising wages or improving benefits. What it is about is bringing into this country over a period of years millions of low-wage temporary workers with the result that wages and benefits in this country, which are already going down, will go down even further.”

The time has come for the oligarchy to Feel the Bern. Senator Sanders and his leftist friends introducing a minimum wage bill for the umpteenth time does not rattle the oligarchy. One more press conference or one more rally will not make the Chamber of Commerce sweat. 

What keeps the cheap labor lobby up at night is the idea that labor unions and the old labor-friendly left that Senator Sanders is a part of will wake up from their delusions and return to fighting mass migration as the largest contributor to wage suppression.

This is all the more critical because, in addition to wage suppression, mass migration erodes union density. The Cato Institute, the Democratic Party’s undisputed policy leader on immigration, celebrates mass migration’s negative impact on union density. 

How can Bernie Sanders and the labor left celebrate immigration policies suppressing native wages and functioning as a cancer on unionization efforts? Where is the Bernie Sanders who understood that mass migration is about suppressing, not raising, wages? The Democratic Party desperately needs someone to reintroduce working-class economic and public safety interests to their immigration policies.