"The Case for Open Borders": Exploiting workers on both sides

US-Mexico border. Image source: By User Larsinio on en.wikipedia - Originally from en.wikipedia; description page is (was) here19:00, 11 April 2006 Larsinio 1152x862 (189,587 bytes) (from http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/print.asp?URL=/cross-border/nafta-rules/new-mexrule.htm), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=791553

Here's another quote from "The Case for Open Borders". From page 208:

Simultaneously, 50,000 midwestern auto workers, mostly in the midwest, lost their jobs. Many of those jobs went to Mexico, where, Akers Chacón reports, productivity rates increased over 66 percent between 1990 and 1999. During the same period, however, real wages fell by about 20 percent. Unionization rates also dropped over the same period. In other words, the open-borders-for-capital and closed-borders-for-people schema is a lose-lose for both American and Mexican workers. Closed borders is a win only for the corporations, which use the border as a wedge to lower wages, undercut worker protections, and keep the assembly line zipping.

Opening borders would immediately strip corporations of a key tool of exploitation, offering workers easier access to decent wages and facilitating collaboration and collective organization.