A common accusation against supporters of open borders, and even against supporters of moderately more open borders or guest worker programs, is that such support is motivated by a radical leftist agenda.

The exact rhetoric of these accusations varies from country to country. Below are listed some examples in the context of immigration to the United States.

Consider the article The Open Borders Lobby and the Nation’s Security After 9/11 by William Hawkins and Erin Anderson:

The concept of “open borders” has long been an agenda of the ideological left. Since the 1960s, a vast network — including hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of grassroots activists, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from leftwing foundations — has waged a sustained campaign to open America’s borders to a mass migration from the Third World. Though these groups talk in terms of “human rights,” the rights they demand are not the restrictions on government enshrined in the American Bill of Rights, but the claims on society for “equity” and “welfare” and special treatment for designated groups that are the familiar menu of the left and would, if enacted, amount to a revolution in America’s existing social order. Which is precisely their intent.

The “open borders” movement emerged from the radicalism of the 1960s and matured in the fight over amnesty for illegal aliens in the 1980s. It gained a certain mainstream status in the 1990s as the “globalization” and “multilateralism” fads of the decade encouraged talk of a “world without borders” and the decline (even the demise) of the nation-state. At the center of the movement was the Ford Foundation – the largest tax-exempt foundation in the world, and one increasingly guided by the political left.

Later in the same article:

The left’s long-running effort to transform American society from below through an influx of what is hoped will be unassimilated immigrants from dissimilar cultures has since 9/11 become closely entwined with protests against homeland security measures and the global war on terrorism. As the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was coming up, the radical teachers group Rethinking Schools put out a special report, “War, Terrorism, and America’s Classroom,” which offered the views of scholars, journalists, poets, and activists opposed to American actions. It also offered teaching suggestions, writing topics and role-playing exercises to promote the leftist interpretation of events. The Ford Foundation paid to have 30,000 copies of the Rethinking Schools report sent to middle school and high school teachers across the country. The report was favorably reviewed in a Fall 2002 “Ford Foundation Report” by Neil F. Carlson, editor for the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy which seeks to set the agenda for funding political causes. Carlson found the Rethinking Schools report important because of its “disposition to question the official story, to view with skepticism the stark us-against-them (or us good, them bad) portrait of the world.”

(Many more details at the article).

Similarly, the article Leftist Foundations Fund Open Borders Agenda says:

Foundations of Betrayal offers a fresh inside look at an overlooked enemy – hundreds of big tax-exempt, leftist foundations that despise free enterprise and, yes, even our Constitution and America’s sovereignty. “Wealth controls culture” and Phil Kent names the control freaks – old-timers like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as devious newcomers like George Soros. Issues ranging from radical environmentalism to open borders serve as their main battering rams to remold America. These unaccountable elites also pay church groups to join their leftward march. They even promote deviant sexual behavior.

In a comment on the Open Borders site, Artur writes:

There is a phrase attributed to Antonio Gramsci which is apt here, I think: “the long march through the institutions”. It meant that instead of violent revolution, the West would become socialist by convincing Western minds — which would be achieved by infiltrating the institutions. Gramsci wrote in the thirties and by 1960 the Soviet Union had the following goals written down, in relation to American institutions:

– overload the Welfare System (to cause a crisis);
– obtain “peace through disarmament”;
– make America give foreign aid to its own enemies;
– make America support the UN;
– put Leftist judges on the Supreme Court;
– present homosexuality as normal;
– place Leftist professors in the universities;
– allow the media to be infiltrated;
– promote pornography;
– prevent children from saying grace in schools;
– promote gun control;
– use radical environmentalism to destroy US industry;
– distort Biblical Christianity.

This was all layed out by the Soviets in the early ’60s and they have done marvelously well.

There is no “inertia” when there are agents working behind the scenes to undermine American institutions.