She was never tasked with fixing enforcement. Instead she addressed why migrants felt it necessary to leave their homes.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, right, chats with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas before boarding Air Force Two at El Paso International Airport in Texas after visiting the border on June 25, 2021.Donald Trump, JD Vance and other Republicans incessantly disparage Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as the Biden administration’s “failed border czar.
Experts agree that attacking the factors driving international migration — poverty, joblessness, drug and gang violence, agricultural failures due to climate change, corruption and other rule-of-law challenges — is essential to reducing pressure on our southern border. Absent success on that front, tweaking U.S. border enforcement will never have a lasting impact.But efforts to address the “root causes” of immigration must be undertaken within a realistic time frame.
Harris’ aptly named “Partnership for Central America,” launched in July 2021, was such an all-hands effort. It raised more than $5.2 billion in private-sector commitments for job-creating projects in immigration-producing countries. To pull this off, Harris had to maneuver around formidable impediments to effective governance in countries such as Honduras and Guatemala, where authoritarian presidents were deeply implicated in corruption and drug trafficking.
Harris’ geographic portfolio was limited to Mexico and the Northern Triangle. When she began working on the project, that small subset of countries accounted for most of the migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.But as the COVID-19 pandemic abated, the migrants became much more diverse in their national origins. In 2021, dozens of countries — including China, India, Russia and much smaller countries such as Mauritania — began exporting large numbers of migrants.
Harris deserves her share of credit for this. The Biden-Harris administration’s record on border enforcement is certainly mixed, but that should not distract from the progress made through Harris’ efforts to address the causes of immigration.
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