The Harris Visit to Guatemala

The kind of immigration policy theater Kamala Harris engaged in on her trip to Guatemala was pretty disgusting. The American VP going to Guatemala and telling Guatemalans to stay out of the United States serves nothing but a domestic audience in the U.S. so that Biden can say he’s being tough on immigration. If you are a Guatemalan and you are looking to escape poverty and violence, do you care what Kamala Harris has to say? No. Do you even know who she is? Almost certainly not. It’s insulting to the Guatemalan leaders (as feckless and corrupt as they themselves might be) to put them through this kind of theater. This doesn’t even get to the point about the moral obligation the U.S. owes Guatemala for the 1954 coup, all the other CIA activity, the Reagan-supported genocide in the early 1980s, the drug trade, the guns flowing south from the U.S. that are used for the violence, the displacement off farms due to CAFTA, etc. Moreover, Biden’s plan to stop people from migrating by throwing some cash at Central America is laughable as policy. It will not work.

There’s really nothing positive that can be said about what the Biden administration pulled in Guatemala this week. I am very disappointed. And just because I support this administration over Republicans does not mean I will pull my punches when it does very bad things.