> It's not really about bringing in essential skills, it's about driving down wages

Sort of. You’re simply not going to have an agricultural sector with at Canadian and American wages without significantly higher food prices and protectionism. One day we may automate that. But that will still be more expensive for the foreseeable future.

Voters seem to be picking domestic production and low prices, with low wages being a side effect. (Business interests of course love those.)

Free borders policy is a special case of free market, so of course more competition is intended to drive the cattle prices down .

This is literally what anyone means when they can't or can't easily find anyone for anything which isn't evil or suicidal.