Kamala Harris’s first overseas trip as vice president, a visit to “Northern Triangle” countries, sparked criticism from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the socialist congresswoman who has become heart and soul of the Democratic Party. She disliked the veep telling would-be illegal immigrants, “Do not come,” and made her feelings clear.
AOC described Harris’s words as “disappointing” and, as night follows day, blamed mass migration on Washington policy. The socialist congresswoman from New York, like most people on the Left, reflexively inculpates America whenever possible, and so she argued, “We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.”
But she need not worry, for the Biden administration’s new pose of toughness and Harris’s suggestion that she’ll “continue” — that’s a laugh — to enforce the law is baloney. The vice president’s trip to Latin America is entirely performative, not a genuine effort to stanch the northward flow. This was clear in the refrain that she’d focus on the “root causes” of illegal immigration, which is always a phrase that should raise a warning flag.
Politicians talk about “root causes” for two main reasons. First, they hope it makes them look more knowledgeable and smarter than everyone else. It’s intended to suggest that they see deeper into a problem than ordinary people. These superior beings focus on the profound and long term rather than on the superficial. It’s code for “Don’t you little people trouble your heads about stuff you don’t understand. Leave it to us experts.” It captures governing class disdain for their fellow countrymen.
On her trip, Harris is talking about climate change, among other irrelevancies. Some of those heading north say they’re fleeing hurricanes and drought. But America draws migrants from all over the world now, as it always has, because it is rich and offers free people the opportunity to make a better life. Glossing that over with a modish excuse about climate appeals to the Left, but it’s not a real explanation. Talking about climate change is a way of avoiding doing something immediately effective. Action on climate will make not the slightest difference to illegal immigration in the next year, four years, decade, or perhaps ever.
The other wonderful thing about focusing on “root causes” is that you don’t have to acknowledge “real causes.” The real cause of the surge of illegal immigrants over the southern border is that President Joe Biden scrapped President Donald Trump’s policies, which were working. He ended construction of a wall, the building of which had lent both practical and symbolic force to the past administration’s genuine intention to be effective.
Biden sent clear signals southward that Trump’s tough policy was a thing of the past, that migrants would not be sent home, and that now was the time to get into America while the door was wide open. Just as Harris was wafting about south of the border, Biden scrapped Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, which had worked well. It obliged asylum-seekers to remain on the other side of the border until they got a court hearing. This filtered out fraudulent claims, which accounted for the vast majority.
Harris’s trip to Guatemala and Mexico makes for great photo opportunities. She can play the stateswoman and be seen glad-handing government leaders on the world stage. Crucially, she can at the same time avoid going to the place where the real problem is. That’s at the border itself. She doesn’t want to be photographed and appear on prime-time television standing next to the actual crisis, which is in her own country, on the American side of the Mexican frontier. Biden put Harris in charge of the illegal immigration crisis more than 10 weeks ago, and she still has not gone to view the biggest issue in her portfolio.
Between Guatemala and Mexico, NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed Harris and asked her why she hadn’t been to the border. She replied, “We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border,” to which he aptly shot back, “You haven’t been to the border.” Confronted like this, Harris blathered about not having been to Europe either, laughed in that weird way she has when she’s covering up, and disingenuously suggested, “I don’t understand the point that you’re making.”
She understands, all right. The point is she doesn’t want to get near to what the administration only recently admitted was a problem and certainly has no intention of taking steps to fix.
