Ten million migrants stormed our border while Harris was ‘border tzar’. What will change?

Her record on immigration, which voters routinely regard as the most important campaign issue after the economy/inflation, deserves scrutiny but will likely receive cursory treatment even if there is more than one debate. Moderators should first ask Ms. Harris about the radical positions she advanced the last time she ran for president. During the first primary debate in 2019, Ms. Harris and every other candidate raised their hands to indicate they supported providing free health care to illegal immigrants. Does she still think it’s a great idea to encourage lawbreaking after she’s seen more than 10 million migrants illegally storm our borders since she took office?

When asked in the same debate whether illegal immigrants should be deported if they had no other offenses, she replied, “absolutely not.” She also said she disagreed with the Obama administration over its deportation policies, and boasted that she had given a “directive to the sheriffs of my state that they don’t have to comply with (deportation) detentions.”

Is she still opposed to building a wall, which she called “a complete waste of taxpayer money” in 2020? And, while we’re at it, perhaps she can explain why she wants to hire more Border Patrol agents now, when in 2018 she compared ICE agents to the KKK and, in an interview with MSNBC that year, also suggested that ICE should be abolished or reformulated.

Trump has agreed to debate Harris three times, but so far Ms. Harris has agreed to only one, on ABC, where the news operation is led by Dana Walden, who, according to a New York Times article this week, is a close friend of the vice president. The issue of illegal immigration is too big to ignore, but expect the debate on ABC to be as friendly to her as possible. Trump will be quizzed on why he opposed the Democratic legislation and may be asked unfair, loaded questions like, “Do you still support locking children in cages at the border?”

Illegal crossings at the northern border are set to increase sevenfold to 190,000 in 2023, but the chances of the issue coming up as an election issue are slim. That’s a shame, because last year, for every suspected terrorist apprehended at the southern border, six were arrested at the Canadian border (564 in total). Legal immigration may also not come up, which is a shame, because Americans have a right to know who the candidates want to admit and how many. Trump has a track record of cracking down on illegal immigration, but his positions on legal immigration are unclear. In June, he said he wanted to offer green cards to everyone who graduates from a two- or four-year college, an insane plan that would turn non-selective American universities into visa factories. And in his 2019 State of the Union address, he said he wanted to bring in the “largest numbers ever” of legal immigrants.

During his administration, Trump also proposed overhauling legal immigration in America, away from family-based chain migration, which typically accounts for about two-thirds of immigrant visas issued in a given year, and toward a merit-based system more akin to what Canada and Australia have. His plan went nowhere, but the idea is worth reviving. Ms. Harris opposed merit-based immigration in 2019, arguing that we can’t have “hierarchies among immigrants.” Does that mean we should treat a high school dropout drug dealer the same as a science PhD?

Candidates probably won’t be asked about nonimmigrant visas, which is a shame because up to half of the illegal population came here legally, most on tourist visas, which are still far too easy for citizens of poor countries. I suspect Trump and Harris will quietly provide corrupt support to corporations that want to increase the number of guest workers arriving on skilled (H1B) and unskilled (H2A agriculture, H2B general labor) visas, but they should be asked to explain why more guest workers are needed in a flagging economy.

How will Harris 2.0 attempt to talk her out of the far-left immigration positions she has held in her recent past? I suspect some Americans would give her the benefit of the doubt if she were to admit that her party’s policies caused the migrant crisis and say that she now realizes we need to get tougher. But she is highly unlikely to do that. Instead, she will rely on the corrupt media and her own formidable acting skills to cover up her odious record, while hoping that Americans will be as oblivious as the president.