Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic candidate for the 47th President of the United States of America, put a bow on her party’s four-day pitch to the public by delivering a powerful speech at the DNC last night as she accepted the Democratic nomination.
In her most significant speech to date, Harris addressed one of the most pressing issues in the 2024 election: immigration.
Harris’ Indian mother and Jamaican father moved to the U.S. to pursue degrees, and they raised their daughter in the midst of hard work in Oakland, California. Now the vice president of the United States, Harris is on a path to potentially becoming the 47th President of the United States of America.
Where past presidents and politicians have secured support by exploiting dangerous rhetoric and extremist or unsubstantiated concerns about uncontrolled immigration — Trump infamously said immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ echoing rhetoric that politicians generations before him have also said — Kamala Harris begged to differ. “I refuse to play politics with our security,” Harris said during her speech.
- “Let me be clear. After decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it, but Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. I refuse to play politics with our security, and here’s my pledge to you. As President, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law. I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border.”
Harris has indeed refused to play bait to the Republican party’s tactics. Border crossings have been high in recent years. However, Republicans have dismissed meaningful conversations about immigration policy, administration, or the positive impact of immigrant workers on the economy by citing the tens of thousands of migrants crossing the border “illegally,” as they say. The fact that the majority of migrants crossing are doing so for humanitarian reasons is often willfully ignored.
Also Read: Trump Lied About Immigration and the Border. Biden Brought A Poor Defense to the Debate.
But Harris, knowing that she is between the devil and the deep blue sea, has also refused to fall into the trap set by the other side of the political spectrum, including her own party, on the issue of immigration. While Trump and Republicans say the Biden administration is too lenient when it comes to border security and enforcement, Democrats — and justifiably so — believe they are too strict. The idea that the Biden-Harris administration hasn’t taken a firm stance on border security is fallacious. Their administration has deported more migrants from the U.S. than any previous administration. Nearly 2.5 million Title 42 expulsions occurred during Biden’s term, far greater than the number of people placed in the Remain in Mexico program under Trump. The Biden administration restarted deportation flights to Venezuela, persuaded Mexico to accept Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian, and Nicaraguan migrants, conducted sweeps, restricted visas, increased ICE detention numbers, and returned tens of thousands of Haitians to Haiti by air.
Democrats know they are vulnerable on the topic of immigration. Those who spoke in support of Harris all week sandwiched their speeches with a sentence (or less) about the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans refused to sign. Elected officials who spoke at the DNC neither directly defended their border control nor offered any sort of support or solution for asylum seekers or undocumented people.
When Harris at last graced the stage, she pitched an immigration policy for both sides of the political spectrum: The border can be secured by signing the bipartisan border security bill into law, and Congress can create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people who have lived in the U.S. for several years.
But on a major note, Harris and her party wanted voters to recognize it would be wrong to underestimate her toughness.
- “As Attorney General of California…I fought against the cartels who traffic in guns and drugs and human beings who threaten the security of our border and the safety of our communities. And I will tell you, these fights were not easy, and neither were the elections that put me in those offices,” Harris said in her speech.
In the lead-up to her speech this week, several speakers and the omniscient voice in her ad also defended Harris’ record of prosecuting gangs and drug traffickers. This is a key point for Harris’ campaign, as Republicans often inaccurately merge the migrant crisis with the drug crisis.
Also Read: Dive deeper into the Republicans’ Immigration Messages
Trump and his Republican allies want voters to believe that it simply does not matter what Harris’ manifesto says about the migration crisis. Trump’s position on immigration, though flawed, is the basis on which many successful U.S. politicians have built their careers. This narrative works so well because the polity plays the perfect muse. Sensationalism becomes much easier when there is a common enemy to target.
But it has not always worked. Despite the dominance of the border security narrative this election season, perhaps a brighter takeaway from the DNC this week is that immigrants cannot be blamed for all of the nation’s problems. The DNC’s speakers instead took great pride in the nation’s immigrant history.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore, raised by an immigrant single mom, centered his speech on the legacy of the six construction workers killed when a cargo ship struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on the early morning of March 26.
“Making America great means saying the ambitions of this country would be incomplete without your help. It’s the legacy of those six workers who fixed potholes on a bridge while we slept. Who were born in a different country, but who knew that America was big enough for them too. It’s the journey of a man raised by a remarkable immigrant single mom, a man who felt handcuffs on his wrist at 11 years old, who now stands before you as the 63rd governor of Maryland, and the first Black governor in the history of our state,” Moore said.
In his speech, Harris’ running mate, Governor Tim Walz, emphasized the need to avoid succumbing to right-wing negativity. “… That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you.”
The ball is in the voters’ court. 73 days and a wake-up call until Nov. 5.
