In a span of about 30 seconds, Vice President Kamala Harris offered an absurdity, a long-since outdated talking point, a contention that undermined her argument instead of strengthening it, and a knee-jerk demonization of those who disagree with the administration.
CHUCK TODD: We’re going to have two million people cross this border for the first time ever. You’re confident this border’s secure?
VICE PRES. KAMALA HARRIS: We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration. But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years. We also have to put into place a law and a plan for a pathway for citizenship for the millions of people who are here and are prepared to do what is legally required to gain citizenship. We don’t have that in place because people are playing politics in a state like this and in Congress.
First, Harris contends that the administration’s decision to make a secure border a priority means the border is now secure, which is akin to asserting that wanting to have something means you have it. If the border were secure, U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not be regularly experiencing more than 200,000 encounters per month.
Second, Harris perhaps lapses into 2020 campaign-trail autopilot, lamenting, “there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years.” Harris and the rest of the Biden administration have been on the job for 600 days, or one year and almost eight months. If the problem really has gotten worse over the past four years, almost half of that has been on Harris’s watch.
But the numbers tell a different story. Throughout most of 2020, attempts to cross the U.S. southwestern border were particularly low, in part because of the Trump administration’s stricter enforcement policies, and in part because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The “deterioration” didn’t really occur over the past four years; the surge of migrants arrived in the opening months of the Biden administration.
Third, Harris seems to assert that lots of people are attempting to cross the U.S. southwestern border because of a lack of a path to citizenship, when if anything, it is the opposite: The possibility of an amnesty and a path to citizenship to those here illegally is a factor that makes crossing the border more tempting. If the U.S. government is going to offer a path to citizenship to those in the country illegally, a migrant will want to get to the U.S. as quickly as possible, to ensure they qualify for that path to citizenship, lest the offer expire or change in the future.
Fourth, the reason that there is not a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already is not that “people are playing politics in a state like this and in Congress” but because there is not a sufficient political consensus in support of the idea. Supporters often like to point to surveys indicating majority support for the idea, but then Americans go and elect lawmakers who do not support it, or who do not support it without other policy concessions, such as significant improvements in border security. Notice Harris cannot bring herself to acknowledge that there could be some legitimate, good-faith skepticism or opposition to the idea of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants; the opposition is simply “people playing politics.”
But other than all that, the vice president’s answer was fine.