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Kamala Harris’ candidacy has injected some energy into a toxic presidential race between two old men feuding over their golf games on national television. But his rise comes with risks. As Joe Biden’s vice president, Ms. Harris briefly ran as an officeholder. He will inherit their weaknesses, which Republicans are eager to exploit. This is most evident on immigration.
On July 25, House Republicans (along with six Democrats) passed a resolution censuring him for failing to “secure the border.” Donald Trump spoke about his potential presidency in apocalyptic terms. “Kamala Harris will make the invasion exponentially worse,” he told reporters. “Our entire country will be permanently destroyed.”
In 2016, Mr Trump created the border crisis to create fear and hatred. But now the crisis is real: Migrant encounters at the US southern border have increased during the Biden administration. There were nearly 2.5 million apprehensions at the border in fiscal year 2023, a record. Encounters have fallen by more than half since their peak in December, thanks to increased enforcement by Mexico and Mr Biden signing an executive order tightening asylum in June. But polling by The Economist and YouGov shows that 14% of registered voters consider immigration the most important issue facing the country after inflation.
In 2021, Mr Biden tasked Ms Harris with looking at the “root causes” of migration in Central America. Republicans have interpreted this widely, dubbing him the administration’s “border czar” and laying the blame for high levels of migration at his feet. One of the biggest challenges of his campaign will be to counter these claims and convince voters that he has a plan to fix the problem.
So far that plan remains elusive. His record gives some indication. As on other issues, Ms. Harris has changed her mind on immigration to suit her ambitions. When she was District Attorney of San Francisco, her tough anti-crime policies extended to immigration. He angered progressive Democrats by supporting a policy that required law enforcement to refer arrested undocumented teenagers to immigration authorities. As Attorney-General of California, she worked with federal authorities to disrupt drug trafficking.
But as a presidential candidate she pursued more progressive and eccentric policies. The blatant cruelty of Mr Trump’s policy of separating families at the border and images of children in cages have led many Democrats to call for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency charged with detaining and deporting migrants. Was assigned the task to do. “We have to seriously re-examine ICE,” Ms. Harris told the left-wing cable news channel MSNBC. “And we probably need to think about starting from the beginning.” During his short-lived campaign he supported government-provided health care for undocumented immigrants and civil rather than criminal penalties for those who cross the border illegally. These statements have already become fodder for Republican attack ads.
As Vice President, his record on immigration is poor. Ronald Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, told The Atlantic that Ms. Harris was not thrilled with her work to tackle the causes of migration to the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras by encouraging development, democracy and the rule of law. , During a visit to Guatemala he had a stern message for would-be immigrants: “Don’t come.” But when asked why she didn’t go to the southern border, she responded defensively, “And I didn’t go.” Europe.”
That may point to some progress. Ms Harris raised more than $5.2 billion from private companies to spur development in the region. The governments of Central America are more stable, and migration from the Northern Triangle has declined. But the source of that stability varies from country to country. El Salvador’s powerful President Nayib Bukele has locked out 1% of the country’s population. The election in Guatemala of anti-corruption reformer Bernardo Arévalo in 2023 was a success for US diplomacy. Sanctions on Guatemalan elites who tried to prevent Mr. Arévalo from taking office helped ensure the transition. But it is unclear how involved Ms Harris was. “He set the early direction for what the expectations were on good governance… but most of the actual policies were driven by the State Department,” says Andrew Sealy, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank.
Still, their work in Central America doesn’t seem like a priority. He has visited this area only twice. Mr Biden, who was given a similar assignment during his second term as vice-president, has visited Latin America 14 times.
In some ways the “root cause” strategy is a hangover from what came before. In recent 2020, migrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle caused the majority of encounters at the border. But under the Biden administration, the southern border has become a global crossroads. Migrants from Ecuador, China, India and Türkiye are trying their luck. Promoting development and democracy was never a way to reduce migration in the short term. It is now impossible to create a “root cause” strategy for the entire world.
Ms Harris knows the border is a political liability for her. She will try to remind Americans of Mr Trump’s more harsh policies. She is considering Arizona senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly as a possible running mate. Mr Kelly had consistently called for increased border security for years before Mr Biden signed his executive order.
She may well continue her boss’s carrot-and-stick strategy: ramping up enforcement while exploring new legal pathways for undocumented immigrants in their communities. His biography is proof that such ideas can co-exist. “I expect her to sound like a prosecutor when she talks about the border, and like the child of immigrants when she talks about immigration and the future of America,” Mr. Celli says. ‘
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved.
From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
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