In his first speeches seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, he has not explained his position

David Brooks and Jim Cason

Correspondents

The newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, July 25, 2024, p. 27

New York and Washington. The selection of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate will inevitably mean that the three months until the election will revolve largely around the issue of immigration and, in particular, how each party proposes to address the flow of undocumented immigrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Everyone is already aware of the extreme anti-immigrant proposals at the center of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s agenda, and now the question is how Harris will respond and whether and how she will modify the policies promoted by President Joe Biden.

Early in his presidency, Biden tasked Harris with leading his administration’s efforts to address the root causes migration to this country. Over the past three years, White House officials say Harris’s greatest achievement in this area has been an alliance public-private which has raised more than $5 billion in investments in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to mitigate the factors that generate migration from those countries.

But the results of this effort – beyond funding – are still disputed. On her first trip to Guatemala in 2021, Harris spoke of the importance of creating opportunities so that people would not be forced to migrate. But she added, in a televised speech: I want to be clear with the people of this region who are thinking of making that dangerous trip to the US-Mexico border: Do not come, do not come..

Those comments sparked anger among immigrant advocates, who argued that they showed a lack of sensitivity to the plight of immigrants, and were criticized by Republicans who pointed out that the flow of people from those three countries, among others, had increased in the following years.

Sympathy for the undocumented

But in practice, Harris has frequently expressed sympathy for migrants. On some occasions, she has recalled that her parents migrated (the father from Jamaica, the mother from India) to the United States, where they met as students. In her first meeting (it was virtual) with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in May 2021, Harris said she understood that Most people do not want to leave their homes. When they do, it is often because they are fleeing danger or have been forced to travel because there are no opportunities in their countries..

For his part, López Obrador thanked this attitude and responded on that occasion that We thank President Biden for appointing you to lead migration-related issues. This is an issue that I understand is of great importance to President Biden, as you were appointed, as Vice President, to lead all efforts around these issues..

A few months after that first encounter, in a face-to-face meeting with López Obrador in June of that year, Harris acknowledged the complexity of the immigration issue. “These long-term issues, by their nature, will never be resolved overnight… but it is important to move forward and I remain optimistic about the potential for that progress. I also believe that if we recognize the capacity of the people, if we invest in their capabilities, we will see great results from our investment.”

▲ Kamala Harris, the US vice president who is seeking to reach the White House, yesterday at the Indianapolis Convention Center, where she was cheered by women from the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc. fraternity at the opening of the Grand Boulé meeting.Afp Photo

Harris called Mexico a partner on the immigration issue and added: I can’t say it enough: most people don’t want to leave their home.reiterating that people leave because of danger or the need to support their families.

Three years later, both Democrats and Republicans in this country seem to be talking less about the underlying causes and more about numbers. In a statement to the media on Tuesday, the Trump campaign declared that “the czar Border Patrol Kamala Harris is responsible for the border invasion, which has resulted in nearly 100 terrorists roaming the country, hundreds of thousands of Americans killed by fentanyl, an epidemic of child trafficking, resulting in murder and secrecy, and the expansion of a new kind of crime, a crime directly linked to Harris’ own beliefs and supported by her actions, freeing migrants to prey on and kill innocent Americans.”

He closing from the border

Since assuming the role of presidential candidate last weekend, Harris has been silent on immigration issues, not mentioning them in her first two public speeches after her boss dropped out of the race and endorsed her. And Biden, for the past six months, has been competing with Republicans to see who has the best policy measures. close the border, limit access to asylum, increase deportations and even rebuild part of the famous border wall.

Now everyone is waiting to see what Harris will do about this issue. When she was San Francisco’s city attorney, she supported a city policy that required law enforcement to turn over young undocumented immigrant minors to immigration authorities if they were arrested or suspected of committing felonies, even if they had not been convicted of a crime, CNN reported. But as California attorney general, she told CBS News that An undocumented immigrant is not a criminaland gained the support of the state’s Latino community.

In her first and brief presidential campaign in 2020, Harris supported proposals to expand the regularization of dreamers –young people who came to this country with their undocumented parents–, something she also supported as vice president, although the Biden administration never invested the political capital necessary to promote this initiative.

Kerri Talbot, director of the Immigration Hub, a nonprofit, praised Harris’s past efforts on these issues. Since she was a senator and attorney general of California, and now as vice president, Kamala Harris has been one of the prominent leaders on immigration reform, efforts to combat transnational crime, and strengthening border security..

In her first days of campaigning for the presidency, Harris has challenged her opponent Trump on several of the central issues in the race, but has yet to respond to right-wing anti-immigrant characterizations and concerns in public polls about the immigration issue.