Kamala Harris Now Pretends To Be a Border Hawk (Pt. 1)

Kamala Harris proposes throwing money at mass immigration without deterring it

Kamala Harris has tried to reinvent herself as a border hawk by supporting the hiring of more immigration agency bureaucrats. She argues former President Donald Trump only opposes the Bipartisan Border Security Agreement—passed by the Senate in February—to use immigration as a campaign wedge issue. That agreement, however, would further facilitate mass immigration.

Border security and immigration remain a tough sell for her campaign in Arizona and Nevada, where she persistently trails Trump in polls.

Her past statements on the issue are out of sync with the current mood of the country. She has expressed support for mass amnesty and decriminalizing illegal border crossings. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), signed a bill allowing illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.

(Read more: Kamala Harris' Dark History Backing Illegal Immigration Puts Her to Biden & Obama's Left)

Gallup shows that the Biden-Harris administration’s failed border policies have erased four years of propaganda by the news media and open borders activists. When Trump left office, only 28 percent of Americans wanted to curb immigration, versus 34 percent who supported increased immigration—the opposite of when he took office. Today, 55 percent of Americans want less immigration, versus 16 percent who want more.

To win moderates, who would prefer not to vote for Trump if they can avoid it, Harris must convince enough of them that her solutions will solve the immigration crisis.

In August, she released two border security ads. In one, she touts her experience as a border state prosecutor. In another, she claims to be the “one who will fix our broken immigration system” and attacks Trump for opposing increased funding. Both ads include Trump’s border wall as a backdrop, which she opposed.

Allied media, meanwhile, have launched a favorable blitz for her—trying in Men in Black-style to give her a blank slate and erase the public’s memory of her past statements.

How is immigration broken, and how does Harris aim to “fix” it?

At an August rally in Las Vegas, Harris repeated the cliché: “We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it.”

But for whom does she consider it broken?

For Americans who want to leave a prosperous, uniquely American society to their grandchildren, the immigration system is broken because it lets in too many immigrants, legal and illegal.

Americans tired of paying for expensive private schools so their kids can get an education in English. 

They’re tired of their children not being able to find entry-level jobs in their hometowns because low-wage foreigners hold them all. 

They’re tired of college tuition skyrocketing because American universities set their price points to match what wealthy, Chinese communist bureaucrats can afford to pay for their children to attend.

They’re tired of having to settle for suboptimal entry-level wages after college because they must compete against experienced white-collar workers from poor countries.

But throwing money and manpower at mass immigration without stopping it—as the Senate agreement does—would only streamline those problems rather than fix them.

In February, President Joe Biden’s White House touted the agreement as “the toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border we have had in decades,” arguing that it will “fix our broken immigration system.”

The administration complained that border patrol staffing remains stagnant, despite border encounters increasing by 250 percent. It fails to mention the reason for this. The Biden-Harris administration ended Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy.

The agreement increases CBP agents by 7.5 percent, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) beds by 25 percent, asylum judges by 14 percent—which would barely make a dent in the 5–7-year asylum case wait time—and asylum officers by 330 percent.

The bill completely misdirects its focus

The massive increase in asylum officers and paltry increase in asylum judges shows that instead of quickly dealing with the overload in asylum claims and fixing the broken asylum system, the proposal embraces that system and anticipates continued mass asylum encounters.

It also proposes expediting work permits to migrants and allocating $1.4 billion “for cities and states who are providing critical services to newcomers.” Unsurprisingly, the proposal received the Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement, as it would increase the pool of legally available cheap labor.

For Harris and the Democratic brain trust, the system is broken because it doesn’t let in enough immigrants without political blowback.

Hiring more CBP and ICE agents without slowing the flow of immigration allows the smooth entry of millions of economic migrants, while better filtering out smugglers and violent criminals.

Her proposed fixes mirror the posturing of Arizona Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego. He is another open borders radical. But he began advocating for increased funding for border towns and CBP when polls showed voters souring on the Biden-Harris border policies.

The Democratic brain trust and voters are talking past each other in their agreement on the broken state of the immigration system but with different visions of what the ideal system would look like.

How to screw up a successful system

As an example, let us imagine a successful, locally owned restaurant. To enjoy more family time, the owner hires a manager and temporarily steps away. Without permission, the manager decorates the restaurant with signage for leftist causes and aggressively promotes it on social media. Although the tactic gains urban foodie tourists, the locals stop eating there. The drop in tips and pretentiousness also causes most of the staff to quit.

To keep his job, the new manager agrees with the owner that the business model is broken. To fix it, he suggests the owner hire only non-heteronormative and neurodivergent employees with liberal arts degrees to match the new customer base. The owner, however, must pay them more, give them as much time off as they want, and provide insurance plans that cover therapy, sex changes, and abortion.

The hypothetical restaurant’s business model is only broken because the manager tried to reinvent it. It worked fine when it operated as a normal restaurant in a normal community.

The same holds true with the American immigration system and border security. They didn’t break intrinsically. They simply aren’t designed for the open-house nation that Harris imagines. Agreeing with disaffected voters that the system isn’t serving its purpose is a sly way of transforming the country without explaining what she thinks its purpose should be.

The Democratic Party has long been the party of the bloated bureaucratic state and open borders. Adding to the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies further bloats the federal government and builds the infrastructure to usher in millions of foreigners, who will then become fast-tracked to legal cheap labor and voting citizens.

Americans want reduced immigration, not more bureaucrats to facilitate more of it. The immigration system is broken for the people it’s supposed to serve because the Biden-Harris administration encourages mass immigration and does not use its diplomatic leverage to force Mexico and other bordering nations to keep illegal immigrants away from the borders as Trump did.

(Read more: Kamala's Loophole to Keep the Border Open - Even if Trump Wins)

Jacob Grandstaff is a freelance writer in Tennessee. He graduated from the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C.