▲ The Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, Kamala Harris, was yesterday in Douglas, Arizona.Photo Ap
Jim Cason and David Brooks
Correspondents
La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, September 28, 2024, p. 19
Washington and New York. Vice President and Democratic White House candidate Kamala Harris traveled to Douglas, Arizona, to take a photo and give a speech in front of the border with Mexico, offering the latest confirmation of a dramatic turn in a nation that not so long ago proclaimed country of migrants –a phrase that the candidate repeated today–, but where political leaders from both parties now compete to slam the doors on mobile foreigners who do not have the money or family relationships to gain entry even legally.
US sovereignty requires establishing rules and applying themdeclared Harris at the border, accompanied by members of the border patrol as decoration. The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than political games and their personal future.he added when referring to his Republican opponent.
Harris has denounced, and repeated it today, that Donald Trump convinced her party’s legislators to kill a bipartisan bill with measures to add more agents to border surveillance, limit the right to asylum guaranteed under national and international laws and allow to the White House close the border when the number of daily entries reaches an established limit. According to Harris, Trump preferred, for electoral reasons, to maintain chaos in the south rather than support a solution.
In practice, the Joe Biden and Harris administration has implemented many of these measures by executive order and have considered making them permanent. In her comments at the border this Friday, Harris justified promoting these types of policies along with some immigration reforms by arguing that the false option between (only) securing the border or creating a safe, orderly and humane immigration system is rejectedand stated: we have to do both.
Law reform
Although he reiterated that immigration reform is required, the focus of this campaign event was border security. With this, he promised to impose more extreme measures to stop unauthorized crossings, and also to increase the fight against drug trafficking with more agents and technology on the border. He stressed that the majority of fentanyl comes from two cartels in Mexico, made with precursors from China.
Four years ago, the notion of limiting access to asylum and expanding border barriers was anathema to the Democratic Partysay Muzaffar Chishti and Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. In an analysis, they add that While policies that reduced access to asylum and expanded the border wall were previously condemned by Democratic Party leaders, they are now a central element of that political force’s orthodoxy.and they conclude: Despite the different rhetoric on migration, Democrats and Republicans now have a similar approach to the border.. Nobody here doubts that the electoral dynamics are what is behind this turn. Polls show Trump is perceived as more capable than Harris in control the southern borderan opinion even more marked in the key states that will determine the result of this election. That’s partly why Harris went to the border yesterday.
The consequences of the attempts to stop this flow are devastating for those who travel without papers, even when they manage to enter they must live in the shadows for fear of being detained, and now with one of the presidential candidates promising that, if he wins, he will carry out the most massive in history. On the border itself, more severe measures implemented during the recent decade have resulted in more migrant deaths: 568 fatalities recorded by the border patrol in fiscal year 2021, almost 900 in 2022, in 2023 there were 704, according to official figures, and in 2024 there are just over 560, CBS News reported.
She is a politician; Trump is the apocalypse
Harris’s promoters argue that her positions are not necessarily desired, but the alternative is much worse. I haven’t spoken to anyone who has tried to argue that Harris and Trump will be in any way similar.declared a veteran defender of migrants to the Politico digital portal, adding that she will do some things good, some things not. But she is a political woman, he (Trump) is the apocalypse on this topic.
There is no doubt that Trump’s fierce anti-immigrant rhetoric has changed the public debate, but Democrats also share some of the blame for their failure to forge another narrative and educate citizens about the benefits of the arrival of foreigners. As a result, it is the first time since 2005 that a majority of Americans favor limiting migration, and by a higher percentage since 2001, pollster Gallup reported.
Routes to citizenship
This week, Democratic lawmakers and members of the caucus Congressional progressive Greg Casar, Jesus Chuy Garcia and Pramila Jayapal along with other colleagues presented a resolution calling for addressing the root causes of forced migration and a concrete scheme to bring migrants to citizenship in the United States. Although the non-binding resolution will not change policy, it is an attempt to offer a real alternative to what leaders of both parties are now advocating.
“Democrats can build an orderly, humane and stable system.
We must create more legal routes for migration and obtaining citizenship while changing failed US policies that cause displacement and force people to flee their countries of origindeclared Casar, founder of the caucus congressional meeting on global migration.
