Vestrynge and the migration U-turn: a left that no longer believes its own story

Vestrynge switches sides and the left looks for scapegoats

There is a paradox that comes up in every conversation about immigration and wages: those who insist most that the phenomenon is driven by big business are also those who resist any limits on it. The case of Vestrynge —a veteran left-wing leader who co-founded Podemos and now points to the cost of migration for workers— has peine that contradiction. The discussion is not so much about what he says, but about whose side he is on.

The uncomfortable thesis: it is not the politicians driving it

The central argument circulating is that mass immigration is not pushed by political parties, but by corporate groups: large employers, investment and asset management funds, hotel groups and rentiers. From that logic, the PP and Vox would be serving those interests, and voting for them would amount to voting for more immigration and wage collapse. The corollary is uncomfortable for the left: if capital is the one pushing, a discourse that denies it leaves workers without a tool.

The rebuttal comes from the institutional flank: it is those same groups that grant citizenship from the moment migrants land at Barajas. And the sarcasm is quick to trinc —"we'll have to wait for the left to govern and curb immigration to see wages rise"—. No one in the conversation offers a figure that settles the debate.

Is Vestrynge one of us? The purity test

The most repeated answer is no. It is argued that he would never vote for Vox or anything to its right, and that his level of criticism of immigration does not even reach that of other radical left parties: if he were one of theirs, they would have expelled him from the purple orbit long ago. The traitor label works as an inverted certificate of authenticity.

The counterpoint is that the conversion comes too late. He is reproached for having co-founded "the most pro-immigration party in Spain" and only discovering the problem now. "Hindsight makes us all geniuses," sums up the objection. The underlying suspicion: this is not an analysis, it is a position.

The economic substance nobody disputes

Beyond the personal judgment, the substrate is material. It is claimed that workers do not want more immigrants because they are being driven to ruin, and that those who want growing flows are the power groups, because they earn more and do not cut their profits. The word that appears is slaves: labour with no capacity to negotiate wages.

The example given is Mercadona: its success would be explained by an army of migrant workers producing and serving the food. It is a hypothesis thrown out without data, but it points to something verifiable: the workforce composition of large-scale retail.

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The question no one answers with numbers remains: if the diagnosis is that capital imports labour to depress wages, why is the political response proposed more restriction rather than more bargaining power? On these terms, Vestrynge's U-turn will remain a purity test rather than an economic debate.