[datadata]

If the US is supporting the worse conditions that make taking the job the lesser evil, and benefiting from the resultant labor (as parent comment claims), then it isn't really compassionate to support that system, as the system depends largely on suppressing quality of life elsewhere rather than creating opportunity. An analogy is that it might be the lessor evil for an African centuries ago to get on a slave ship rather than to be murdered on the spot. That doesn't make supporting slavery compassionate.

[hackerlight]

I disagree. You can support immigrants being allowed to work without supporting all parts of the system!

Cause and effect is what matters. Not some abstract purity test of "supporting a system" that's totally disconnected from actual moral outcomes. If you advocate a policy that blocks immigrants from working in the US, you are directly causing their suffering. If your position aligns closely with ethnonationalists, it's time for some deep introspection. This is malevolence masquerading as compassion.

[datadata]

> You can support immigrants being allowed to work without supporting all parts of the system!

This is my exact position. You are assuming I am against immigration. In the big picture, the system that makes immigration is not compassionate, but it would also not be compassionate in the small picture to stop immigration.

[kaashif]

I've seen that argument (the one you're replying to) many times online and I never understand it. In the same breath people say that immigrants choosing to immigrate will have low wages and poor working conditions. Alright, but that's no secret, they know that and it's still better than where they came from, or they wouldn't move! Keeping them out hurts them or forces them into illegally immigrating.

The America First, America for Americans type people at least have a position that is coherent even if it's not compassionate.

The anti immigrant liberals for whom class solidarity ends at the border just don't make sense to me.

[hackerlight]

It's a purity thing. The left and right have their own notions of purity that have nothing to do with a deep understanding of morality. If these notions of purity are violated, they feel disgust. For the right, everyone knows what those notions of purity are (racial purity, bodily purity). For the left, hiring low wage workers is one of the triggering impurities, even if doing so leads to demonstrably utilitarian outcomes in the form of reduced suffering. So it's just people trying to avoid disgust triggers. Nothing to do with morality.