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The way out of this conundrum is just to incorporate open borders mindset as one of the key aspects of the culture. This battle over the identity of let's say Western World is the key component of the Culture War. It is a battle of multiple value systems raging from nationalism, secular humanism, religious systems as well as the new "woke" Critical Social Justice value framework.
But there is also more to it, I like an essay by Bruno Maçães, a former diplomat from Portugal. In the essay he states that:
I think that this is largely true for many western moral elites. Be it people who endorse Effective Altruism or rationality and who fully believe that this is "scientific" and universalistic moral system that will eventually be adopted and/or enforced by AI. Or be it more liberal or even Social Justice crowd that sees their value system as basic human rights. Meaning their ideas of how the society should be organized is outside of standard political process, rights are inalienable and have advantage of being protected even against disagreement from majority. If they manage to enshrine themselves as new clergy that decides how the Declaration of Human Rights holy book is to be amended, they can manage the whole World. All these moral thinkers believe in some form of "grand narrative" where they are on "right side of history" which indicates a belief that history has some direction and that there exists something like "moral progress" in similar vein as scientific progress.
This is also highly cosmopolitan class that can be at home in New York, Tokyo or Buenos Aires. They do not have allegiance to the national state, in a sense this is too restricting. Effective Altruists claim to give equal moral value to all people who are living or who are going to live. They are proudly declaring themselves as new shepherds of the whole humanity, even if they have to drag these sheep kicking and screaming by the power of the new god in form of AGI aligned with these "universalistic" values.
Also you are not the first one to notice how the supposedly multicultural liberal values are highly colonial. In the wake of invasion of Afghanistan the new military government embarked on the project of instilling the current western values there. We see the whole western world recoil at football World Cup being held in Quatar, a society that let's say does not meet the current requirements when it comes to treating gays or women. I think that there is a little bit of struggle now in the West, where many people are starting to realize that maybe their values are not as universalistic, and that maybe they will not be implemented voluntarily. I think that is one of the reasons why we see the left turning authoritarian.
Their moral beliefs require them to be correct, as mentioned "being on the right side of history". So we see the classic return to mark those who refuse as reactionaries and bigots and extremists who fight against enlightenment and progress. In order to save this narrative the left engages in huge amount of editing and constant revisioning of history. For instance in the past the eugenics movement was huge part of progressive ethos. You had people like Karl Pearson who gave lectures with titles like Darwinism, Medical Progress and Eugenics with the same arguments as progressives of today: bigots and fanatics do not understand impact of science like Darwinism. They are stuck in 19th century so it is on us: scientists, politicians and experts who are armed with sufficient scientific knowledge as well as moral strength to bring humanity over into 20th century. And that vessel will be eugenics. For progressives of today, eugenicists were not "true progressives". They conveniently stuck the whole thing as rightwing coded - ah, it was Hitler who euthanized "undesirables". Pearson was probably cryptofascist posing as a progressive. He was definitely a white man.
So to conclude, I do not think that Open Borders is against many strains of thinking especially prevalent on the left. Colonialism was not bad because it destroyed local cultures, colonialism was bad because it interfered with the higher project. For instance you do not see much of critique of how ideas of certain mid 19th century white German philosopher named Karl Marx infiltrated thinking in countries like China or many African nations. It does not seem that there is a push to topple Marx's statues, quite to the contrary new ones are being erected. The belief is that there is going to be a moral end of history and the whole world will be part of one huge "multicultural" soup sharing the same value system. So in that sense open borders do not matter.
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