There is something inherently amusing about watching the Guatemalan response to the arrival of Vice President Kamala Harris. The most amusing of which was realizing that for all of the liberal angst about President Trump's border policies, those who are being left behind in the countries that are losing people are just as against the border changes as the conservatives in this country are.
Who would have thought that it was the conservatives who agreed with the Central American people? Well, if you've been paying attention, you would have.
As I've stated previously in other blogs, on social media, and in person, mass emigration hurts Central American countries far more than it helps the United States, and the results of these caravans can be devastating for those left behind as well as for those who are undergoing these outrageously dangerous journeys.
Who do you think are coming here in these caravans? It's not the poor, they can't afford the Coyotes' fee. It's not the rich, they immigrate legally because they can afford the fees and waiting periods. It's the middle class who are often the hard working people who make the economies of these countries work. Losing those workers devastates these country's economies, and makes it even worse for those left behind and harder for them to build up.
Conservatives have long asked how in the world these countries can build their economic power and stability into something that eliminates the driving factors of mass emigration when the very people that drive that economy are the ones emigrating. It's like taking the gas out of a car and then wondering why you can't get to where you're wanting to go.
Then the cycle continues. The country gets worse, more people emigrate. The country then gets worse, so more people emigrate. They simply repeat this process again and again until they reach a point where there is very little future economic recovery possible until a new generation of workers rises up and is trained to do the jobs necessary to run the economy.
No, not the grunt laborers, they can't afford to move out. It's the managers, the small business owners, the innovators, the higher skilled workers (engineers, nurses, et al) that emigrate illegally to the US. They leave behind many who need their skills in the country that taught them those skills, and then we wonder why those countries can't advance or get ahead.
Well, those remaining in those countries know, and they let the Vice President know how they feel.
Yet if you listen to the American News Media you would believe that she would be showered with praise and have rose petals thrown at her for allowing people into our country. Yet when you hear the President of Guatemala speak about it, he's angry at their policy, and particularly about their inability to get their message straight. Obama was clear, "come, just come." Trump was clear, "don't come." Biden has been a broken traffic light with all three lights blinking in all directions...
The message is something like:
Come, if you must, we won't make you wait in Mexico, but we'll still detain you, and if you're an adult you can't come in and stay, but if you're a kid you can, and maybe if you're a parent of one of these kids, but maybe not if you don't meet one of these other criteria, but you might still be able to seek asylum, unless you're not here with a child, or unless your now claiming religious or political asylum, which doesn't mean you'll get it, but you'll have to wait in our detention facility, until it's too crowded and we have to start this process on someone else, and then we'll send you back regardless because there's just too many to process, or maybe we'll just release you into the US to await your trial date...
Got it?
This is exactly what the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, was angry about, and he talked about it openly when discussing what he and the Vice President talked about to the Guatemalan press. By the way, good luck finding that video, only snippets are available in the US Media, but you can find his statement about their pre-meeting phone calls here.
He says, "'The message changed to, 'We are going to reunite families and we are going to reunite children.' When that happened, The very next day the coyotes here were organizing groups of children to take them to the United States. We asked the United States government to send more of a clear message to prevent more people from leaving."
So what did Vice President Harris do? She sent what she believed was a clear message:
So, I try to give credit to where it is due. This was a positive step and it's a solid policy, if it fact it is the one that they're going to enforce. Yet, wasn't this the same policy that Donald Trump had?
Why yes, it was.
In fact, it's so much so that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to twitter to criticize the Vice President for her statement. Here is AOC's tweet:
This policy, of course, is in complete contradiction to what Joe Biden ran on during his campaign, and it's also in complete contradiction to how they operated when he first got into office. Yet, I'm not complaining, it's a solid policy, even if it doesn't go far enough.
Yet the big question I have it why some on the left are now attempting to defend her? (Notice I clearly said SOME, not all)
I mean, during the ENTIRETY of Donald Trump's presidency he was called a racist and xenophobic bigot for enforcing this exact same policy. "Don't come here" unless you do it legally. This is LITERALLY Trump's playbook, which by the way he didn't invent, the idea goes back to Reagan and it was codified by Bill Clinton.
Yet, that's not my beef, my issue is why was it racist when Trump did it, but it's not racist when Harris does it? AOC didn't call her racist like she did Trump. There are not marches in Los Angeles and New York against Biden and Harris' "Racist Policy." Nancy Pelosi didn't get up on the floor of the congress and talk about how Biden's "Racist Policies" are a shame to "our great nation."
It's insanity. Biden and Harris are doing the same thing, with the same cages, to the same people, and are sending the same message. Yet they aren't racist, Trump is, and don't even get me started on the fact that it all came about under Obama.
How about this, none of them are racist, they're all just enforcing a realistic border policy that protects the interests of the American People and those who are already here.
But nah, to say that means that Trump's policy wouldn't be racist, and we can't have that.
**NEWSFLASH**
A POLICY doesn't become racist or not racist based upon who's implementing it. A policy is an idea. It can only be racist or non-racist in and of itself. If it's not racist for them, then it's not racist for Trump, and vice versa.
Yet this is how the media works. They'll crow and cackle about it throughout the 24 hour news cycle when it's against Trump or a Conservative, but when it's Biden and Harris, or a liberal? Well, they pad it, massage it, and try to deflect it.
Give AOC credit for this at least, she may not be consistent with her name calling, but she is consistent with her policy stance. She wants a completely open border, and she doesn't care about the consequences. She has a position, and as much as I disagree with her, at least she sticks to it.
Unrestricted immigration hurts us, and it hurts the countries that we're taking these people from. It's not humane, at least not for those left to pick up the pieces of their country after all of these people leave. But we don't want to talk about that...
Kinda like we don't want to talk about the fetus in the womb fighting for its life against abortion instruments. It's just an uncomfortable truth we'd rather avoid. In fact, we'll do just about anything to avoid it, including calling people names and denigrating them.
This is what happens when we take simplistic and emotive views of complex issues. We want it all to be warm and fuzzy. We want a storybook ending in which everyone gets to live happily ever after so we'll make it into that by ignoring the plight of those left behind. I mean we can tell really nice stories about the success of those who came here illegally, we'll just leave out what they did to those left behind because we don't like dealing with complex issues that don't make us feel good.
Intellectual laziness at it's finest ladies and gentlemen.
I hope that President Biden and Vice President Harris have seen the light. I hope that they've looked at the 78,000 migrants in January, the 74,000 migrants in February, the 173,000 migrants in March, and the 178,000 migrants in April and have realized, "we can't keep doing this," but I truly doubt that's the case. This is more likely them asking for it to slow, not stop, as much as I'd like to believe them.
I guess we'll have to see how this turns out. We'll have to see if the media and liberal wing of the Democratic party have any shreds of intellectual honesty left in them. I doubt it, they won't rake Biden or Harris over the coals like they did Trump, but hey, intellectual honesty has never been their strong suit.
I'm not mad about their changing policy, I'm upset because the same people who called for Trump's "racist" head on a silver platter are not doing the same for those who are following his same policies, and that's by their own side's admission (thank you AOC for at least that honesty).
Hypocrisy on display for all to see.
We'll see if they can correct it.