It’s no secret that the Wall Street Journal has an ongoing love affair with the notion that nothing helps business more than unfettered access to cheap labor. They are so married to that idea, in fact, that on July 3, 1984, the Journal’s editorial board argued that if Washington wanted to do something about immigration, it should pass the five-word constitutional amendment: “There shall be open borders.”
But when the chaos represented by truly open borders started playing itself out in real life this week, with the caravan of some 14,000 illegal aliens making its way towards the U.S., the Journal took a decidedly different position. It seems that the one thing that might spoil the pure capitalists’ appetite for an endless supply of cheap labor is the reality of anarchy and mayhem that will undoubtedly accompany it.
Rather than ringing the dinner bell to “let them all in,” the editors instead argue that “Trump has good reason to turn them back.” They then go on to compare the current caravan to the Mariel Boatlift an event in which the “unintended consequences of the mayhem were costly.”
The Journal’s editors have finally found themselves at that unpleasant intersection where reality has a head-on collision with greed. Or the point where theory meets reality.
Clearly, the downside of thousands of migrants – funded and egged on by leftist nations – pouring in over our borders is not only unnerving to the public, but to the stock market as well.
And that’s just not acceptable to the Wall Street Journal.