Explained: Where does Kamala Harris stand on immigration?

With Kamala Harris stepping in as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, her policies, particularly on immigration, take centre stage.

The daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, both of whom immigrated to the U.S. during the Civil Rights Movement, Harris’ historic presidential bid has put a spotlight on her stance on immigration.

The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a continued rise in net immigration through 2026, contributing to a larger and younger workforce in the country.


This influx of immigrants, primarily in their prime working years (25-54 years old), is expected to offset the decline in labour force participation due to an ageing population in the US.

The CBO estimates that the rise in immigration in the US will add an average of 0.2 percentage points annually to the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate between 2024 and 2034. This translates to a projected increase in real GDP of around 2% in 2034 compared to a scenario without significant immigration growth.

Where does Kamala Harris stand on immigration?
One of Harris’ mandates as vice president was to address the root causes of migration from Latin America, like poverty and violence in migrants’ home countries, according to a report by The New York Times.

Last year, she announced $950 million in pledges from private companies to support Central American communities. Similar commitments made previously totalled about $3 billion, says the report.

In 2021, during her visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, Harris said, “This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue. We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we are talking about suffering.”

More recently, she backed a bipartisan border security deal that Biden endorsed but Donald Trump, by urging Republican lawmakers to kill it, effectively torpedoed, the report adds.

The legislation would have closed the border if crossings reached a set threshold, and it would have funded thousands of new border security agents and asylum officers. “We are very clear, and I think most Americans are clear, that we have a broken immigration system and we need to fix it,” Harris said in March.

Record no. of Indians are opting for the donkey route:
The "donkey" route has been an open secret in Punjab for more than a decade.

People traffickers often take migrants from New Delhi and Mumbai to the United Arab Emirates on tourist visas.

Then they go through as many as a dozen transit points in Latin America such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Guatemala to reach the U.S.-Mexico border, according to families of men who had recently completed their "donkey" journeys.

A record 96,917 Indians were caught or expelled last year trying to cross into the United States, up from 30,662 in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It is not clear how many more managed to cross the border.

Democrats targetted Harris over immigration:
Soon after Biden's announcement, Republicans sought to blame Harris for the Biden administration's woes at the U.S.-Mexico border, where American officials have reported record levels of illegal crossings in the past three years, as per CBS News.

Harris is almost certain to face heightened criticism regarding the Biden administration's track record on immigration, a key issue for American voters leading up to the election. And Harris does have an immigration-related role in the Biden White House, but her responsibilities on the issue are often mischaracterized.

Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s immigration policies:
In March 2021, when the Biden administration faced the early stages of an influx in illegal crossings at the U.S. southern border, Mr. Biden tasked Harris with leading the administration's diplomatic campaign to address the "root causes" of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including poverty, corruption and violence, as per CBS News report.

“The region, known as Central America's Northern Triangle, has been one of the main sources of migration to the U.S.-Mexico border over the past decade.”

The report says, Harris was not asked to be the administration's "border czar" or to oversee immigration policy and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border. That has mainly been the responsibility of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and his department, which oversees the country's main three immigration agencies, including Customs and Border Protection.

“In reality, the only role close to that of a "border czar" under the Biden administration was held for only a few months by Roberta Jacobson, a longtime diplomat who served as coordinator for the Southwest border until April 2021.”