The Democratic Party, and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, must stop “border security” and offer a new approach to the immigration debate, one based on American values of justice, opportunity and truth.
The contrast with Donald Trump should have been an easy sell: The former president promised to carry out “the largest mass deportation” in the country’s history and issued an executive order denying birthright citizenship to children born to citizens who are in the country without papers. These actions will have a devastating impact on millions of people, many of whom have been in the United States for decades. This will destroy our economy, which is not only dependent on undocumented and undocumented immigrants, but is fueled by them. And it will undermine our moral standing as leaders of human rights around the world.
While the Republican Party’s embrace of exclusion is scary, what’s equally troubling is the Democrats’ embrace of bogus policies border security with more restrictive asylum regulations, including President Biden’s executive order in June that closed the border to asylum seekers when the number reached a certain limit. The hope seems to be that a slightly less brutal approach than mass deportation will satisfy those sympathetic to immigrants but also draw some MAGAistas away from the xenophobic abyss.
Harris seems to be playing this strategy with him now famous 2021 comment told the Guatemalans: “Don’t come… If you come to our border, you will come back.” Although it may be a statement of fact rather than a threat, it shows a lack of understanding of the forces that drive migrants to leave their homes. It also hurt him – and the administration – credibility with the immigrant community; “a huge flaw,” a political scientist at UC Irvine told The Times. His latest talking points — emphasizing the prosecution of drug cartels and the border crackdown bill Republicans tanked earlier this year — lean in the same anti-immigrant-tinged direction.
So what does Harris have to say and do? To borrow his own emerging slogan, he must argue that “we will never go back“for divisive policies and “build a wall” attitude. Tough talk against immigrants has a short political life. We in California know this story firsthand.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the state’s Proposition 187 in 1994, a measure that sought to prevent undocumented immigrants in California from accessing basic and vital services – especially health and public education for their children. Every teacher, school nurse, firefighter and police officer must report anyone they think is undocumented. The initiative remained and was eventually deemed unconstitutional by a federal court, but even when it was not enforced, it sparked a backlash for all Californians.
Thirty years later, California’s political landscape has changed so much that the state has expanded get income tax credit, college program and health insurance for undocumented citizens. Most importantly, it is now almost impossible for an anti-immigrant candidate to win state office.
The move away from exclusion does not happen by itself. At first, it enabled a tug-of-war between California moderates and progressives on how to push back against anti-immigrant fear and fervor, with some arguing for a middle ground of defense, similar to Harris’ current stance.
But what won was a grassroots effort to build a multiracial, cross-sector coalition of support for common-sense policies in the sanctuary state. In just one example, when anti-immigrant jurisdictions began to use traffic stops to criminalize non-citizens – upending families, communities and swaths of the economy, not to mention traffic – the coalition asked the Assembly to pass Bill 60, after a battle spanning more than a decade , in 2013, gave undocumented immigrants access to special driver’s licenses.
Along the way the process proved the benefits of inclusion to the country. As The Times reported last week, international migrants have “lifted” the US and California economies, filling and creating jobs and “pumping millions of tax dollars” into government coffers.
Indeed, the Golden State politician is now likely to remind the audience that country’s economy – the fifth largest in the world – is home to more than 10 million immigrants with a spending power of $383 billion, and 40% of the country’s entrepreneurs are immigrants. Even undocumented immigrants are a proven boon: On a national level, they contribute $13 billion more per year into the Social Security system than they can withdraw.
California’s shift from Proposition 187 thinking can and should be exported nationally. This is a ready opportunity for political figures, but especially Harris and the Democrats, to look to the future.
Survey shows that despite the attack on the very existence, immigrants and children are generally optimistic, a clear contrast to the dark tone of the MAGA movement that thinks America can only be great if it returns to some mythical, all-white past. Harris should carefully adopt a more hopeful vision of America, one based on facts that prove the contributions of immigrants, rather than being tempted in any way to confront Trump’s hate-filled agenda.
We are two children of never-undocumented parents. We know that immigrants add to our society, that newcomers are morally evil and factually wrong. A bold and courageous commitment to inclusion will strengthen the United States, reflect the values of a democratic and diverse nation, and bring us closer to realizing the American dream that so many, especially immigrants, want.
Manuel Pastor is professor of sociology and director of the Equity Research Institute at USC. Miguel Santana is president and CEO of the California Community Foundation.
