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Just six weeks after Joe Biden’s inauguration, 80 House Democrats urged the newly sworn-in president to immediately renew diplomatic engagement with Cuba and end the “cruel” sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.
The letter encouraged Biden to end the blockade and take executive action to reverse Trump’s policies.
Biden ignored the plea. Not long after the letter was sent, a White House official told Reuters that a quick Cuba policy shift was not a top priority.
Harris embraced Trump’s narrative, if not the rhetoric, and yet had nothing to show for it on Wednesday morning.
The decadeslong U.S. embargo against Cuba rolled on, hitting the Cuban people first and foremost. During the pandemic, this sanctions regime led to severe food and medical shortages on the island. People left in droves.
Since 2020, Cuba has seen the largest exodus in its entire history. Over 1 million people left between 2022 and 2023 alone as a result of the economic crisis.
And they came to the U.S.
Cuba became one facet of an immigration debate in the U.S. that took a central role in the presidential election.
Donald Trump railed against immigrants, presenting them as a threat to a supposed American way of life. Kamala Harris, for her part, embraced this same narrative, if not the rhetoric, and yet had nothing to show for it on Wednesday morning.
It was an unsupportable, immoral, and unpopular position. And Harris gained nothing.
It was a typical Democratic folly: the wrong position that is also bad politics. There was a way out of the race to the bottom in the immigration debate — and there still is. If Harris and the Democratic Party are to have any hope, they must learn on this issue, like so many others, to address it by examining its root causes.
Creating Chaos Abroad
It’s a pattern seen all over Latin America: U.S. policies foist hardships on those abroad, who then migrate to the U.S. in search of better lives.
Take Venezuela, which has sent record numbers of immigrants to the U.S. following the imposition of of devastating American sanctions in recent years.
In Honduras and El Salvador too, hawkish U.S. foreign policies built on everything from anti-communism to the drug war have propelled droves of immigrants to U.S. shores.
And yet, within the 2024 presidential race, these root causes of these crises — the push factors — never came up.
Instead, Trump railed against immigrants in general. And, rather than pledging to enact a humane border policy and working internationally to slow emigration, Harris chose to ignore the issue altogether — or to run to Trump’s right.
It did not need to be this way. Harris could have simply listened to the American people, who understand aspects of the immigration conundrum better than politicians seems to understand.
About 71 percent of Americans, including majorities across the political spectrum, believe economic factors are largely behind the recent influx of migrants, whether it’s better opportunities in the U.S. or poor conditions in their home countries, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Sixty-five percent pointed to violence in migrants’ home countries as a major reason for driving so many people to the U.S.
About 71 percent of Americans believe economic factors are largely behind the recent influx of migrants.
Notably, the report also found that a sizable majority of Americans consider the influx of migrants a crisis or at least a major problem. Though Republicans were more likely to view it as a crisis, Democrats still mostly viewed the situation as a major problem. Only 7 percent of Democrats surveyed said it’s not a problem at all.
Harris touted herself as a former border-state prosecutor who would be tougher on the Southern frontier than Trump. During the presidential debate, Harris bragged about supporting a border bill that would have “put 1,500 more border agents on the border.”
Warning From Inside
It’s increasingly clear that the economic warfare the U.S. unleashes on the world comes with a steep political cost. With Republicans leading the charge, Democrats have little to show for going along with it.
Not every Democrat, however, has acquiesced to right-wing narratives on immigration.
Last year, border state Reps. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., tried warning Biden again.
“Rather than re-imposing Trump-era deterrence policies,” they wrote, “we must demonstrate a sharp contrast with these approaches by showing compassion towards migrants and upholding our asylum obligations, while simultaneously seeking to curb the broad-based sanctions that contribute to widespread suffering and spur increased migration.”
“You have a historic opportunity to help mitigate economic push-factors driving migration and affecting our border and many of our cities, while reorienting U.S. policy in the hemisphere towards a more holistic approach that eschews destructive sanctions policies to focus on peace, stability, and prosperity for all inhabitants of the Americas,” the letter continued.
That opportunity was available for Harris to seize during the presidential race. She could have offered an alternative vision for how the U.S. treats the world and the people who arrive at our borders from abroad.
Instead, she tried — and failed — to co-opt Trump’s talking points. Despite her best efforts, Trump’s immigration attacks on Harris contributed to her election loss.
Now everyone, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, must suffer the consequences.
