What a coincidence. Exactly five weeks before the November 5 elections, President Joe Biden thought it was the best time to further tighten restrictions on the right to asylum and affect the most vulnerable people.
Is it a coincidence that one of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ greatest weaknesses is the immigration issue?
Rightly or wrongly, American voters have more confidence in Donald Trump’s immigration policies than in Kamala’s immigration promises. 50% of registered voters said in a CNN poll that they trust Trump to do the job on immigration and only 34% in Harris.
Trump expressed his desire to become a dictator on day one if he wins the election. His first decision as a dictator: close the border with Mexico. Later, his dream is to launch the most ambitious mass deportation program in history, using the US military.
“If Kamala is re-elected, her city and all cities like it throughout Wisconsin and throughout our country, the heartland, the coast, it doesn’t matter, will be transformed into a Third World hell,” Trump said last Saturday in Wisconsin.
And a day earlier, the Democratic presidential candidate said during a visit to the border with Mexico in the Douglas, Arizona area, that she would go further than Joe Biden to punish certain repeat migrants and to safeguard the border.
“I will do more to protect our border, to reduce illegal border crossings. I will take additional measures to keep the border closed between ports of entry; those who cross our borders illegally will be detained and expelled, and they will be prohibited from re-entering for five years,” she said.
She also warned that if someone does not file an asylum application at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border illegally, they will be barred from receiving asylum. “While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and safe, and that is my goal,” Harris said.
Sadly, everything seems to indicate that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are engaged in a race to show themselves as the “toughest” against undocumented immigrants.
We already knew about Trump’s immigration approach during the four years of his presidency, where he was in charge of separating migrant children from their parents and applying strict policies to stop the arrival of migrants during the pandemic.
In Harris’ case, there is an evident hardening of her immigration positions to inoculate herself from the criticism of Republicans that feel that during the last four years an “open borders” policy was applied. She certainly supports immigration reform, but it is easier to close the border by executive order than to change the law.
Political scientists will say that I am naive, that what is happening is absolutely logical. It is what is known as “realpolitik”, a system of politics based on practical considerations rather than moral or ideological ones. In other words, the end justifies the means.
The sad thing is that the cannon fodder for these desperate electoral bombardments are families of flesh and blood fleeing violence or insecurity, hunger, authoritarianism or all of the above. And instead of finding a country that will listen to their claim, they come across a border guard who closes the door in their face.
