‘Be honest about immigration’: Harris faces criticism for her warning to Guatemalans – By Lauren Floyd (Daily Kos) / June 9 2021
Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a cringeworthy message to Guatemalans on her first trip abroad since being elected to the White House: “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come,” she said on Monday. “Do not come.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki later clarified Harris’ message. “What the vice president was simply conveying is that there’s more work to be done, that we don’t have these symptoms in place yet,” Psaki explained to reporters on Tuesday. “It’s still a dangerous journey, as we’ve said many times from here and from many forums before, and we need more time to get the work done to ensure that asylum processing is where it should be.”
It’s a fair explanation, and far be it from me to lay years of botched immigration policy at the feet of the current administration to fix in a matter of months—which by the way, Republicans appear all too willing to do. But this administration does have an obligation to the kind of transparency the administration of former President Donald Trump simply was not capable of. Harris and President Joe Biden are going to have to do more than assert that there are “legal methods by which migration can and should occur.” Many immigrants know that simply is not the full truth.
Olayemi Olurin, a New York public defender, said in a Twitter thread she’s been “lawfully in America” since 2008. “I’ve attended high school, college + law school here. I’ve passed + been admitted to the bar,” she said. “I’m a public defender defending peoples constitutional rights. I still have no path to citizenship except marriage. Be honest about immigration.” Olurin said she is sick of the “myth that you can decide you want to live in America and you fill out some paperwork and you’re done … False,” she tweeted. “It is HARD to get to America legally and it’s even harder to stay.”
