“Do not Come,” says the Super Soft Liberal Socialist Daughter of Immigrants

The Democratic brand is built on a reputation of being less horrible than Republicans. It’s not a strong selling point, being slightly better than the opposition, and in some respects the Democrats aren’t actually better but simply more polite. Apart from their relatively small contingent of progressives, the Democratic party has often been as reliable as the Republicans when it comes to favoring big business, punishing the poor, funding the police state at home and military imperialism abroad. On matters of major polarization, like immigration policy during the Trump regime, there has not been much change so far under Biden’s administration. In truth there was not a great change under any of the presidential party flip-floppings of the past few decades. From Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, immigration policy has not changed that much, and the ways in which it has changed has been in increased restrictions, militarization of the border, and cruelty towards migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.

There have been some improvements under Biden. Children aren’t imprisoned for quite as long and they’re not intentionally separated from their parents forever. Some deportation relief has been extended to groups such as Haitians, though the Title 42 policy of the Trump era was also upheld, and used to deport more Haitians in a week than Trump did in a year. And from the way the vice president is talking, it seems it will continue to be business as usual at the border.

This week, Kamala Harris, on her visit to Guatemala, told viewers, potential migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers “Do not come” to the United States, repeating the phrase and following it by saying that the US will “continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders.” It was a speech that could have been drafted and delivered by members of the Trump administration. The only real differences were in delivery, that Harris’s tone was softer, meant to convey care and concern, and that she didn’t accuse Guatemalans and other desperate Central American people of being drug mules, killers, and rapists. If the speech had been given in a faux tough guy tone by any of Turd’s fascist nationalists, it would have been yet another blotch on their record of broadscale bigotry and been decried by the “left.”

Harris’s statements have been both criticized and defended by those of the purported “left.” Her defenders have argued that she has to act tough on immigration because of perceptions on the “right” that she and Biden and the Democratic party are soft. Again, the only thing soft about her or any of them is the tone in which they deliver their policies. And fuck the perceptions of the “right.” Fuck the “right.” Nothing will appease them and no one should be trying to do that. You do not appease or compromise with fascists who have spent years trying to suppress the will of the people and undo any semblance of democracy in America. They’re trying to impose one party rule and condoned, encouraged, or actively helped facilitate an insurrection and attempted overthrow of the federal government, and the Democrats are worried about their perceptions. Biden and Harris could fuck Trump and McConnell in their butts while gunning down Black people from the roof of an immigrant child prison while shouting “blue lives matter,” and the “right” would still deride them for ruining the country with their softness.

As a tool of US imperialism, it’s not surprising that Harris made no mention of the United States’ culpability in the conditions of Central American countries which might make their people flee and seek refuge in the United States. It’s not surprising that she failed to acknowledge that the US’s “war on drugs” is responsible for the rise of drug cartels and the violence they bring; or that the United States supplies most of the guns used to kill people in Central and South America, the flow of guns going south of the border matching the drugs coming north; or that for every dollar the US “gives” to Central and South American states, we extract far more in wealth and resources; or that decades of US funding and training of military dictatorships throughout Central and South America is largely to blame for the corruption and state violence that continues to this day. But she also failed to clarify, when telling people that if they come they will be turned back, that it is not illegal to seek asylum in the US, and that if people’s lives are threatened, because of conditions indirectly or directly created by US foreign policy, and they have no other way to save themselves and their families other than leaving their homes and making a potentially perilous trek to the US, then they are within their rights to do so under US and international law.

But she wouldn’t want to sound soft.

Biden and Harris have been giving what they promised, if implicitly, that little would fundamentally change under their governance. They also promised compassion, decency, and some goddamn sense. There have been small efforts on some of that, but mostly it’s just been slightly friendlier faces and more politeness in preservation of the status quo.