The panel of Democratic candidates ran away from the tough issues of migration, wages, and amnesty on Wednesday night and found political sanctuary in vague promises of financial aid for Central American countries.
“Invest in solutions in Central America … so there is no reason [for Central Americans migrants] to make that journey,” Beto O’Rourke promised.
“We solve this problem by making investments in the Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, claimed Sen. Cory Booker.
“The root cause of the issue — we need a Marshall plan for Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador so people can seek opportunity at home,” claimed Julian Castro.
The candidates’ promises of a quick fix by spending money rests on the very dubious claim that financial aid can make Central America so prosperous in just a few years that few locals would travel to the United States’s wealthy cities, higher-wage jobs, and better K-12 schools.
The Democrats’ foreign-aid exit strategy was greatly helped by the conventional media hosts who asked conventional questions about migrants’ priorities but no questions about the civic trade-offs, such as whether a decision to welcome low-skill migrants from Central America would reduce marketplace pressure on companies to invest in higher wages and better labor-saving machinery.
Similarly, the candidates did not have to talk in public about the merits of President Donald Trump’s push to change the laws governing asylum or “Unaccompanied Alien Children” because the hosts did not ask about those alternatives.
Nor did the candidates have to talk about the fundamental issue: Should the nation’s immigration rules be designed to help employees and their families or to help investors and government tax collectors?
More migrants mean lower wages, higher rents, less tech investment, and bigger gains on the stock market. But more migrants also means fewer American kids, a poorer Midwest, wealthier coastal regions, and a wide wealth gaps between the top and bottom of society, according to the record created by the 1965 and 199o immigration expansions.
But President Donald Trump’s “Hire American” policy has reduced migration and nudged up blue-collar salaries by roughly five percent in 2018.
The announcers did push the candidates if they supported or opposed the current laws criminalizing illegal migration. The push was led by Castro who is running to the virtual office of Latin0-American mayor — and he won a yes from Sen. Liz Warren and Booker. But other candidates dodged the question — usually by saying it is unneeded — so minimizing political damage in the party’s centrist wing.
Warren managed to avoid anything further about immigration, while the lesser candidates competed to expresse their desire to aid Central American migrants, both in English and in Spanish.
“Look at the bottom line [of Trump’s policies, which is] — that tragic photo” of the two drowned migrants from El Salvador, said New York Mayor Bill De Blasio. “Every American should say that is not America.”
As expected, the candidates promised amnesty giveaways to illegal migrants already in the U.S., welcome-mat giveaways to future migrants who are still at home, and hidden financial giveaways to the investors who gain from extra imported consumers — all without any pushback by other candidates or the hosts.
“We would spare no expense to reunite [migrant] families,” said O’Rourke.
“We needs workers in our fields, our factories,” said Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who claimed a few months ago that the unemployment is uncomfortably low for companies’ needs. “Our economy needs immigrants,” she said, without referring to voters’ preference for pay raises.
Aided by their hosts, the candidates also retreated into clichés:
“We cannot surrender our values [to get] border security,” said de Blasio. Democrats should be the “party of immigrants … against these corporations that created this big mess, to begin with,” said de Blasio.
“Diversity is our strength,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.
“We would rewrite immigration law in our own images,” said O’Rourke.
Klobuchar topped off the Democrats’ fervently migrants-first offers by announcing: “Immigrants — they do not diminish America. They are America.”