Kamala Harris Shifts Position on Border Wall, Signaling Tougher Stance on Immigration

[Social Media]

 

Kamala Harris, once a vocal critic of the border wall during Donald Trump’s presidency, now pledges to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to extend the barrier along the southern border if elected president. This shift comes as Harris embraces a more aggressive immigration policy, a significant departure from her previous liberal positions on issues such as Medicare for All and fracking, which her campaign now opposes.

 

Harris’ campaign appears to be adapting to the pressure of Trump’s repeated attacks on her stance on border security. While Harris now supports measures for the wall, she maintains key differences with Trump, particularly opposing family separation policies and mass deportation plans. In her recent speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris voiced her intention to sign the bipartisan border security bill, a piece of legislation that Trump had previously blocked due to concerns it would politically benefit Democrats in the upcoming election.

 

The bill, negotiated by Senators James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), mandates that hundreds of millions of unspent funds be used to continue the construction of the border wall. Lankford remarked that the bill carries forward the standards set during the Trump administration regarding the structure’s height and location. "It requires the Trump border wall," Lankford told Axios, clarifying that the bill specifies where and how the wall must be built. The legislation’s estimated cost for continuing the wall stands at $650 million, a significant reduction from the $18 billion that Trump originally requested in 2018.

 

However, Harris’ camp argues that this legislation is not a full endorsement of Trump's wall and highlights that it involves much more than just wall funding. Her advisers pointed out that the bill does not allocate new money for the wall but merely extends the timeline for using funds appropriated during Trump's presidency, albeit with new restrictions to ensure these funds are used strictly for barriers. Additionally, the bill includes provisions to address the overloaded immigration system, such as increasing funding for asylum lawyers and judges, and grants the president the authority to close the border if more than 5,000 migrants cross in a single day.

 

This is a sharp contrast from Harris’ earlier stance. When she first ran for president in 2019, she condemned Trump’s wall as a "medieval vanity project" and consistently opposed any funding for its construction. In a 2020 Facebook post, Harris declared, "Trump's border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won't make us any safer." Earlier, in 2017, shortly after joining the Senate, she called the wall a "stupid use of money" and vowed to block any efforts to fund it.

 

Harris' recent support of the bipartisan border security bill has raised eyebrows, even among some of her political colleagues. Senator Lankford expressed surprise at Harris' full embrace of the bill, noting that she had not participated in the negotiations. "We never saw any vice president staff here," Lankford remarked. "I know she's talking about it now, but she wasn't talking about it at all before." Meanwhile, Senator Murphy described the bill as "aggressive," noting that it introduces new tools to manage the border but also emphasized that it does not stray from the nation's core values.

 

Although President Biden had criticized Trump for killing the compromise bill, some Democrats, including Senator Alex Padilla of California, took issue with the conservative nature of the policies within it. Padilla opposed the bill, stating that it "fails to provide relief for a single Dreamer, a single farmworker, a single essential worker or long-term resident."

 

Harris has positioned herself as a hardliner on immigration in her campaign ads, showcasing her time as California's attorney general and highlighting her support for increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. These moves come as Trump’s campaign continues to attack her on the administration’s struggles to handle surges of migrants at the southern border.

 

Harris' evolving stance on immigration reflects how the political conversation around border security has shifted in recent years, largely influenced by Trump’s presidency. Her willingness to support aspects of the border wall is a marked departure from her earlier rhetoric, illustrating the pressures and complexities of immigration policy in contemporary American politics.

 

Based on a report from: AXIOS 2024-09-28

 

 

 

[Tug]

Good!get the bipartisan border bill codified and 650 million in more barriers to me the main thing is get the original bill codified and signed!

[jippytum]

 Harris shows her deperation having to Steal Trump's vote wining stance on immigration 

[Isaan sailor]

Tough border policy—yeah, right.

[mdr224]

Too bad she didnt do it the last four years, she was tasked with it and failed. A lot of illegal immigrants and more crime now are the result. The fake news doesnt cover it but many americans lives have been impacted, alot of them democrats who will now be voting for trump

[thaipo7]

1 hour ago, Tug said:

Good!get the bipartisan border bill codified and 650 million in more barriers to me the main thing is get the original bill codified and signed!

Two big lies told here.  One is she is shifting.  No she isn't.  She will say anything to win the election.  She was with Biden letting up to 20 million illegals into the US.  She was the border Czar but never went to the border and lied repeatedly that the border was secure.   This Bipartisan bill you talk about is a phony.  The bill may have called for border agents but the agents were only going to be paper pushers to process even more illegals.  You can not believe anything the Democrats and the media say to you.  Such a shame you have not learned this.  Build the wall and have the border secured as Trump could have with enough money to build the wall.  So sad some people actually believe what you post.

[wombat]

37 minutes ago, mdr224 said:

Too bad she didnt do it the last four years

That's pretty much the question I ask about everything she spruiks.