CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris said “Joe [Biden] And I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to create the strongest border bill in decades.”
The verdict: Completely wrong. The bill did nothing to close the door on President Joe Biden’s quasi-legal parole system, which has imported roughly 1 million immigrants since 2022 in search of the jobs, wages, housing and schools that ordinary Americans need.
Harris had praised the Senate’s February bill for creating a wide-open capture-and-release path for economic migrants simply seeking asylum, a path that even came with a work permit, obscured by convoluted language and a much-touted claim of extra funding for more Border Patrol agents.
When the Senate bill was released, it was quickly rejected by many Republican senators, in part because Democratic Senate negotiators had praised the bill by saying “the border will never be closed.”
The bill was drafted in the Senate after Democratic leaders rejected a stronger version passed by the House.
The Republican bill, HR2, would boost wages and productivity by eliminating many of the loopholes and ambiguities that Biden’s lieutenants have used to import at least 6 million workers since 2021.
What is the difference between the House-passed H.R. 2 and the “compromise” version passed by the Senate?
Let’s take a closer look 👇 pic.twitter.com/HWWx3pK5Ds
— The Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) November 20, 2023
There is also little public evidence that Harris played any role in drafting the Senate bill.
Harris also combined her support for the loophole-busting bill with a call to reintroduce national amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Speaking on stage at the Democratic National Convention, Harris said:
Last year, Joe [Biden] And I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol supported it, but Donald Trump thought the border deal would hurt his campaign and ordered his allies in Congress to kill it.
Well, I refuse to politicize our security. As your President, I pledge to you that I will reinstate the bipartisan border security bill that he killed and sign it into law.
I believe we can uphold our proud tradition as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create a path to citizenship. [amnesty] And protect our borders.
Overall, the speech offered little evidence that Harris would steer immigration policy in the direction of higher wages for Americans or increased productivity for U.S. businesses.
She mentioned wages only once in her speech, and only in reference to the government lawsuit: “I stood up for veterans and students who have been scammed by big for-profit colleges, and for workers who have been cheated out of the wages they deserve,” she said.
