Fact Check: Kamala Harris Falsely Claims Democrats’ Border Bill Was ‘Strongest … in Decades’

Claim: Vice President Kamala Harris stated during her speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Thursday that “Joe [Biden] and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades.”

Verdict: ENTIRELY FALSE. The bill did nothing to close down President Joe Biden’s quasi-legal parole pathway that has imported roughly one million migrants since 2022 for the jobs, wages, housing, and schools needed by ordinary Americans.
Harris was praising the Senate’s February bill which created a wide-open catch-and-release pathway for economic migrants who merely ask for asylum. The wide-open pathway — complete with work permits — was hidden by complex language and much-touted claims about extra funding for more border guards.

When the Senate’s bill was published, it was immediately rejected by many GOP senators, partly because the leading Democratic Senate negotiator praised the bill by saying, “The border never closes.”

The bill was drafted in the Senate after Democratic leaders rejected a stronger bill that was passed by the House.

The Republican H.R. 2 bill would push up wages and productivity by closing many loopholes and ambiguities that have been used by Biden’s deputies to import at least 6 million people since 2021.

Also, there is little public evidence that Harris played any role in the drafting of the Senate bill.

Harris also combined her support for the loopholed bill with a call for another national amnesty for illegal migrants.

From the stage of 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 endorsed it, but Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.

Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you as President: I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.

I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants, and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship [amnesty] and secure our border.

Overall, the speech provided little evidence that Harris would manage migration policy to help raise wages for Americans or to raise the productivity of U.S. companies.

Wages were mentioned once in her speech, but only in terms of government lawsuits. “I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges for workers who are being cheated out of their wages, the wages they were due,” she said.