Kamala's Hail Mary

There's still time to try it ...

Here's my suggestion for Kamala Harris’ Winning Last Ditch Closing Desperation Play: A FOUR-YEAR PAUSE ON IMMIGRATION, both illegal and legal. Harris could say this would give time for Congress to debate a legislative solution--which it would. A stronger policy justification is that it would give the nation time to absorb the 7-8-9-10 million or so unauthorized migrants with which Biden has flooded the country—much as the 1924 U.S. immigration crackdown gave the country time to absorb previous waves of migrants. It would give small towns and schools and budgets a chance to adjust.

From Harris’ point of view, of course, its biggest virtue is that it would take the main issue that's killing Kamala's campaign off the table for purposes of the 2024 vote. It would actually outflank Donald Trump on the immigration issue (he supports more legal immigration) without requiring the sort of huge mass deportations he’s talking about. It’s simple, understandable, easy to explain: “This campaign has convinced me that on this issue we're hopelessly divided. We need a time out while we talk with each other and emphasize what unites us."

Could this pause be accomplished? That’s a good question, though of course for campaign purposes it may not be the essential question. Harris would be stating her goal. Certainly she could call for legislation to enact the pause. You’d think that would be achievable, given both Dem—e.g. Harris— and Republican support, (Think Bill Clinton and welfare reform.)

Even without Congress, Harris could negotiate a restart of the Remain in Mexico program that Trump used effectively to staunch the flow of migrants near the end of his term. (Under this plan migrants have their asylum claims heard but have to wait out the decision in Mexico, not while roaming around the U.S.—meaning, since only 15% of claims are successful, they’d mostly stop coming.) She could immediately end Biden’s promiscuous use of the “parole” loophole to wave migrants in through a second pathway. If migrants still kept showing up, she could declare a state of emergency, which could gain her some legal traction with judges who might otherwise reach for reasons to uphold a statutory right to claim asylum (and to stay in the U.S. while it’s being heard). The conservative majority on the Supreme Court would come in handy, though they don’t necessarily move in lockstep on immigration.

Many Democrats would hate all this, to the point of immediately threatening to abandon Harris and sit out the vote, if they haven’t voted already. That would be short sighted. First, they’re not going to accomplish their main immigration goal—a mass “comprehensive” amnesty bill—in the next four years anyway (unless Dems sweep Congress in a way that doesn’t look likely). Second, immigration is hardly the only issue for them (even if it almost is for me, and lots of other voters). They’d could still pass legislation on health care, the child tax credit, climate change, voting rights—the whole spectrum of other issues they care about. They could appoint Supreme Court justices. It’s a swap of mass migration for Everything Else. They’d be crazy not to see this as a great trade, especially when the alternative is four years of Trump, not four years of John Thune.

Harris’ current plan is to try to slip past the electorate with an endorsement of the Lankford bill, a “bipartisan” piece of legislation that would normalize a vastly increased flow of migrants — and that didn’t come anywhere close to passing either house of Congress. If you believe her (and you should) she’d add a mass amnesty on top of it.

But whatever your views of the Lankford bill—I think it’s a fraud— Harris has been talking about it for months and it’s clearly not doing the job. In the coming few days, she will likely need something more dramatic, unless she is happy to roll the dice on what looks like a jump ball election. This would be dramatic. I might even vote for her.

You have a better idea?

P.S.: Harris is giving her “closing argument” today, October 29, in a big speech on the Mall. If it fails to move the polls, there’s time for a second closing argument (and maybe a third)— if you believe as I do that voters process new developments faster than they used to. If she launches a Hail Mary on Thursday, there is almost zero chance voters won’t have heard about it by Election Day.

P.P.S.: Canada’s Justin Trudeau, facing a reelection campaign, recently cut back on immigration, though he didn’t go as far as a full pause. He did say the reduction would “result in a pause in the population growth.” Is he just more nimble than Kamala?

P.P.P.S.: There would inevitably be some safety valves in the “pause” — for example, to allow in discrete numbers of skilled migrants to fill specific acute labor shortages. You could also preserve the existing refugee (not asylum!) pipelines, which have been capped numerically, most recently at 125,000 per year. Harris could demonstrate her policy competence by explaining why such limited exceptions don’t vitiate the overall pause.