Immigration

There has been no shortage of coverage of the 10 million-plus illegal aliens who have stormed our borders, the 5 million-plus who’ve been waived into the country and the Biden/Harris administration’s misuse of the humanitarian parole system. But almost nothing has been written about a legal, backdoor entry to the United States that large numbers of migrants continue to exploit: increasingly easy-to-obtain American tourist visas. As I’ve been documenting since 2008, many aspiring migrants find it easy to fraudulently convince my former colleagues at the State Department that they qualify for tourist visas and thus do not need a coyote to help them sneak into the country. But it appears as though this trend has gone into overdrive during the Biden-Harris administration.

It’s official. Donald Trump is “like Hitler” and Kamala Harris — even though she does “pray everyday, sometimes twice a day,” can’t seem to answer questions. Her "joyful" campaign took a confusing turn in her CNN town hall in Pennsylvania Wednesday night. She opened with an attack on Donald Trump, in answer to Anderson Cooper’s question about John Kelly’s claims. Kamala says Donald Trump is “increasingly unstable,” “unfit,” “fascist to the core” and that “he himself has said he would terminate the constitution of the United States.” It wasn’t until much later that “joy” and “optimism” were mentioned. The audience at the Delaware County town hall consisted of undecided voters.

When you look back on the 2024 presidential election and try to understand why it was that Kamala Harris lost, there are a few things to remember. The first is that the two most important issues for American voters were the border and the cost of living. By “the border” I do not just mean the incomplete physical barrier along our southern frontier. That structure is merely the objective correlative of a policy that has its roots in such lofty ideas as sovereignty, the meaning of citizenship and national identity. After her coronation as the Democratic candidate in late July, Harris began to squirm and prevaricate about her appointment by Joe Biden as the “border czar.” But we have the phrase in black and white in the record of the appointment.

After weeks of studious silence, Vice President Kamala Harris has been issuing a flurry of policy proposals that she’s touting as “A New Way Forward.” But is it really new? Or is it the old way forward? In the early hours of Monday morning, she unveiled a series of proposals for the first time on her website about the economy, immigration and foreign affairs. Harris is careful to contrast her proposals, again and again, with what she terms “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda.” Poor Trump. He has repeatedly disavowed the Heritage Foundation tome calling for everything from banning IVF to purging the civil service. But it hasn’t helped as the Harris campaign presents it as his campaign platform.

If you felt the ground shaking, it was Democrats jumping for joy after dumping Joe Biden and settling on a new, more energetic replacement. Joe was the old clunker. Kamala has that new car smell. The switcheroo raises three fundamental questions for the election. First: how long will Harris’s novelty last? Answer: until Labor Day, but probably not longer. Second: how does Harris deal with the Biden administration’s policy failures? Answer: by emphasizing a hopeful future with few details and avoiding talking about her role in the administration’s mistakes. Third: how does Harris deal with her record of very progressive positions, on tape from her last presidential run?