Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during election campaign rally organized by Columbia U Democrats at Barnard College on November 3, 2022. (Shutterstock)
Washington, DC – The following is a statement from Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Vice President Harris’s focus on investments to promote regional stability and address the root causes of forced migration is a timely reminder that the Biden Administration is leaning into immigration issues in a new way, no longer content to cede the debate and framing to a Republican Party hellbent on politicizing immigration and blocking the broader reforms we need and the country supports.
In sharp contrast to Republicans, the Biden-Harris administration is putting forward short and longer-term solutions to address immigration, manage the border and address the hemispheric refugee crisis and factors that are forcing people to leave their home countries and make a dangerous trek to the U.S. border. We do not love all of what they have proposed, but the fact that they are engaging is significant. The President should present more than temporary solutions and a band aid approach. He should offer up a more comprehensive set of sensible approaches that are popular with most Americans. This should include using the powers he has under current law, including executive action to expand and redesignate TPS for Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. And he should refrain from adopting the punitive, failed and unpopular policies of his predecessor. The administration also should constantly remind the American people how important immigrants and immigration are to our shared national identity, prosperity and strength.
Meanwhile, rather than a serious policy discussion on how to modernize our immigration system and meet the challenge posed by rising numbers of asylum seekers and changing patterns of global migration, Republicans are content to inflame these issues, embrace lies and dangerous white nationalist conspiracies and use the courts and congressional obstruction to block needed policy solutions for the border and our broader immigration system.”