"it is true that having a handy supply of illegal immigrants keeps the wages for jobs low. That's a shorthand way of putting it tat we keep hearing in England too - except that it gets applied to legal migrants from places like Poland as well.

But the truth is it's never the migrants who keep the wages down, it's the employers who choose to pay those low wages, and take advantage of the presence of workers who are prepared to take the jobs at that rate. And the authorities who let those employers get away with it, even when the rate is lower than the statutory minimum wage. "I have to pay low wages because there are people who will accept them" is like saying "I have to drive at 100 miles an hour because my car will go that fast".

That was thread drift - back to the thread topic.

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If he'd said "hold on to" or "turn to" it would have meant essentially the same thing but it probably wouldn't have been open to being used in the same way. Language is curious. Perhaps it's because "cling" has gentler associations, and that's a no-no.