– Throughout my career as a lawyer, I have had one client: the nation. Today, on behalf of the country — regardless of one’s religion, gender, skin color and the language one’s ancestors spoke — I accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States, Kamala Harris said on stage in Chicago.
During his speech, Harris talked a lot about his roots and his family history. He spent a lot of time explaining why he decided to pursue a career as a lawyer. He talked about his experience fighting big corporations and sex offenders. He briefly returned to the topic of foreign policy, declaring that he “strongly supports” Ukraine and that the Palestinians have a “right to self-determination,” which drew particularly strong applause from the audience.
After all, Harris has talked a lot about Donald Trump as a threat to the liberties of ordinary Americans. The US vice president argued that Trump, JT Vance and other Republicans want to take away women’s freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, as well as social security, health care and the right to join unions.
Harris also pledged to pursue policies that “ensure the prosperity of the middle class,” echoing Joe Biden’s slogan from the presidential campaign four years ago.
Kamala Harris hasn’t said much about migration. It’s for a reason
Harris, however, was silent on a critical issue that has been hit hard by Republicans and is generally considered by voters to be one of the top issues with the state of the nation’s economy. It’s about immigration.
He accused Trump of being ineffective on his immigration policy, while casually saying that his policy would “conform to America’s legacy of protecting immigrants (…) and protecting the borders.”
During Joe Biden’s administration, the number of illegal crossings at the border with Mexico soared and was the highest in the history of the measurements, surpassing 2 million per year in 2022. Early in his presidency, Biden led Kamala Harris to address the issue of illegal immigration. Harris has ventured to the border and traveled to Central America, but has accomplished little.
Republicans — led by Trump — blame the rising number of illegal border crossings on Harris. However, the matter is more complicated. Although Harris had worked on migration issues for some time, she was unable to address the root causes of migration—underfunding, little development aid, poverty, and the internal politics of some Central American countries—in a short time and without clear authority. . No administration has done this before.
That’s not to say that immigration won’t be an issue for Kamala Harris’ campaign team. The Democratic nominee is viewed more poorly by voters in the region than Trump, and he preferred to focus on other topics at the convention in Chicago, showing he has yet to prepare a good response.
In the coming weeks, Harris will try to shift the weight of the public debate to the issue of independence, which he has made a key issue of his campaign. The outcome of the November elections may depend on whether he dominates the media on issues that matter to him and does not surprise Trump in an area where he feels weak (immigration).