Kamala Harris and her media allies are promising a “tough” border security policy — but her new economic plan reveals her support for a loose border policy of more mass migration.
Friday’s New York Times headline declares “Harris Heads to the Border, Trying to Project Toughness Against Trump,” so mirroring many other media claims of promised “tough” policies.
But three days earlier, Harris released an economic plan that assumes a loose border inflow of low-wage migrant workers, government-aided migrant consumers, and room-sharing migrant renters. The policy would continue President Joe Biden’s “Bidenomics” policy that has radically shifted the nation’s economy away from younger Americans and toward his alliance of older investors, employers, and migrants.
The 82-page plan was scrubbed to remove mention of migrants or immigration. However, it touts economic forecasts from allies which predict she will continue high migration rates, and it also includes footnotes showing that illegal migrants will be welcomed by government agencies.
On page six, the Harris plan boasts that “Experts Find That Vice President Harris’s New Way Forward Is Better for Americans and the Economy,” and touts a report by Goldman-Sachs:
Goldman Sachs estimates the biggest boost to the U.S. economy from a Vice President Harris win. They estimate that job growth will be higher and inflation lower than if Donald Trump is elected. A Harris victory would lead to between 10,000 and 30,000 more new jobs per month than if Trump is elected.
But those extra jobs will be held by migrants, not better-paid Americans, according to the Goldman Sach forecast.
The Goldman forecast said, “We estimate that the contribution from immigration to labor force growth would be about 30,000 per month higher if Vice President Harris is elected than in the Republican sweep scenario,” adding:
If Harris wins, we expect that net immigration will continue [at] 1.5mn [million] per year, somewhat above the pre-pandemic trend of 1mn [legal immigrants]. If Trump wins with divided government, we expect net immigration will fall to 1.25mn. If Republicans sweep, Congress could increase enforcement resources, and we expect net immigration would fall to 0.75mn.
The Harris plan also cites an August forecast by pro-Democrat Wall Street analyst Mark Zandi at Moody’s Analytics, saying: “An analysis by Moody’s Analytics shows that, under a Harris presidency, more than a million new jobs would be added to the economy and household disposable income would rise more than under a Trump presidency.”
But Zandi’s forecast assumes a continuation of the high-migration economic policies set by Mayorkas, saying:
We also expect Harris to propose reforms much like those in the immigration bill President Biden delivered to Congress early in his term, which included pathways for more undocumented immigrants and individuals protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy to apply for and obtain legal status and citizenship.
The 2021 Biden bill would have flooded the economy with millions of white-collar and blue-collar migrants. That population shock would have suppressed wages, shrunk productivity, spiked inflation, and boosted investors’ returns on consumer retailing and real estate.
The Moody’s forecast admits that Donald Trump’s promises to curb migration will raise Americans’ wages:
Trump’s proposed immigration enforcement measures, including more restrictive immigration policies and mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants, quickly cause a significant tightening in the already tight job market, particularly in industries such as agriculture, construction, leisure and hospitality, and retailing, where immigrant workers are more prevalent (see Chart 5). The [Mayorkas] surge in immigration across the southern border since the pandemic reopening has presented many challenges to communities across the nation (see Chart 6), but the benefit has been to significantly increase labor supply and help ease wage and price pressures. This in turn has forestalled even more aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and thus a possible recession. Reversing these immigration flows as Trump is proposing will quickly result in a tighter job market and foment wage and price pressures with immigrant-heavy industries taking the greatest hit (see Chart 7).
Harris’s 82-page plan also includes many spending and regulation programs to offset the predictable pocketbook damage caused by her investor-backed, mass-migration economic strategy.
For example, it offers to raise minimum wages and to grant federal loans to Americans — and to migrants — who cannot afford to buy homes in a housing market inflated by the arrival of 10 million migrants since 2021. This big-government complement to mass migration would be a boon for the many progressives who hold or seek jobs in federal agencies and government-funded non-profits.
The plan mentions just two proposals to raise the workplace productivity that allows ordinary Americans to get paid more for doing more work each day. It offers more subsidized child care for mothers and a tax increase “on corporate stock buybacks to encourage businesses to invest in growth and productivity.” However, the plan quietly ignores the rival strategy of boosting workplace productivity by reducing the population of migrants.
The fine print in Harris’s plan also waives the critical distinction between Americans and illegal migrants.
For example, Footnote 103 links to a September 19, 2024 “Fact Sheet ” from the White House, titled “President Biden and Vice President Harris Are Delivering for Latino Communities.” The document says Biden has “Proposed a rule to expand TRIO college access programs to Dreamers and others, which would allow an estimated 50,000 more students each year to access Federal college preparation services and programs, such as counseling and tutoring, and thousands more to attend college.”
On page 60, the Harris plan promises more “Workforce Hubs” to help train workers for jobs:
The Workforce Hubs have brought together federal and private sector resources to build up a trained workforce to meet demand created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and CHIPS and Science Act. In Columbus, Ohio, this work will prepare at least 10,000 new skilled construction trades workers to meet the demand in the region. [Footnote] 129
The footnote links to a July 2023 White House “Fact Sheet” on the creation of “Workforce Hubs”: “These investments demonstrate how Bidenomics—President Biden’s vision for growing the economy from the middle out and bottom up—is creating jobs and opportunity in cities and states across the country.”
In turn, the implementing regulations for Biden’s workforce program do not exclude illegal migrants and do not favor Americans over temporary foreign workers. But it does give a governing seat to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security — Alejandro Mayorkas — who has already smuggled roughly 10 million legal, illegal, and quasi-legal migrants into the United States. as it declares: “Promoting inclusivity, with equal opportunity for all qualified workers, will help ensure that federally assisted projects have the workforce needed to implement the Investing in America agenda.”
At the Democrat convention, speakers repeatedly included illegal migrants in their definition of “all” Americans, Breitbart News reported on September 1.
“A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired, old debates that keep stifling progress,” former President Barack Obama declared in his convention speech where he demanded the United States society be rebuilt on a foundation of “diversity”:
Because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we are all better off. … They understand that we can secure our borders without tearing kids away from [migrant] their [illegal migrant] parents.
“I promise to be a President for allAmericans,” Vice President Harris said in her convention speech as she endorsed an amnesty for millions of migrants in the name of “unity.”
Migration Policy
In March 2021, Harris declined to share control of migration policy with Mayorkas.
Since then, Mayarkas used his power over the nation’s labor supply to help the “Bidenomics” policy to fund the creation of lower-wage jobs for employers eager to hire new migrants instead of better-paid Americans.
In early September, Mayorkas repeated his wish to skew the U.S. labor market to ensure that CEOs can get all the imported workers they want without having to recruit Americans with offers of higher wages:
We look to the north, with Canada. Canada takes a look at its market needs, and it says, “You know what? We need 700,000 foreign workers to address our labor needs domestically.” And, so, they build a visa system for that year to address the current market condition. And they say, “We’re going to bring in a million people.” And it’s market sensitive.
We [in the United States] are dealing with numerical caps on labor-driven visas that were set in 1996. It’s 2024. The world has changed. It is remarkable how there can be agreement that [the visas system] is broken and not have an agreement on a solution. The country is suffering as a result of it.
Mayorkas’s flood of migrants has pushed down wages, spiked real estate prices, reduced exports, slowed innovation and productivity, fuelled chaotic diversity, pushed up auto insurance rates, killed numerous Americans, and turbocharged Donald Trump’s 2024 bid for the White House.
Mayorkas has repeatedly explained that he supports more migration because of his migrant parents, his sympathy for migrants, and his support for “equity” between Americans and foreigners. He also justifies his welcome for migrants by suggesting his priorities are above the law and appearing to claim that the “needs” of U.S. business are paramount regardless of the cost to ordinary Americans, the impact on U.S. children, or Americans’ rational opposition.
So far, Harris has not been asked by reporters if she plans to fire or keep Mayorkas in 2025. The two share many of the same supporters.
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