“Trump was right” on border policy, former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry told the BBC. “The problem is we [Democrats] should have been right.”
The former party heavyweight has little sway inside the Democratic Party whose leaders just released a plan that would flood America with a massive inflow of Indians seeking white collar and blue-collar jobs, housing, and political power.
Kerry’s admission comes as Trump faces renewed pressure from business groups to reopen jobs to economic migrants.
Democrats “need to be talking about what Americans do care about,” Kerry told his BBC interviewer (starting 32:35):
Immigration. I said this very directly to President Biden that I think the Democrats have missed on the issue of immigration for some years… They just allowed the border to continue to be sieged, under siege.
The first thing any president should say — any president, or anybody in public life, is, ‘Without a border protected you don’t have a nation.’ I believe that. To define your nation, you have to have a border that means something. And there’s a reason we have passports. There’s a reason we have visas. We have a system, and I wish President Biden had been heard more often saying, ‘Well I’m going to enforce the law.’
The scandalized BBC reporter interrupted Kerry to say he was giving Trump the political opportunity to claim his 2024 border policy was correct.
“Well, he was right,” Kerry rebuked the BBC reporter, adding:
The problem is we all should have been right. Everybody should have been right, doing the same thing, all moving in the same direction.
But Kerry took the hint and revived a skewed Democratic narrative to blame Trump for Biden’s disaster:
Now, admittedly, the Republicans joined with the Democrats in putting a bill together, they were ready to pass the bill, and Donald Trump called them up. Said, ‘Don’t do this. Don’t pass this bill. You’ll help the Democrats.’ He didn’t want a solution.
But the Democrats’ supposed border-security bill was carefully designed to increase and legalize the inflow of wage-cutting migrants into American communities and jobs, and was extremely unpopular with GOP legislators.
The BBC’s compliant reporter, James Naughtie, quickly changed the subject from Biden’s failure to Biden’s retirement during the 2024 race. This shift allowed the BBC reporter to not ask Kerry why Biden and his deputies welcomed roughly 10 million migrants which flatlined wages, spiked housing inflation, and handed the 2024 election over to Donald Trump.
Democrats are dodging those questions in the aftermath of the 2024 disaster, partly because lobbyists are pushing them to increase the inflow of migrants through the nation’s borders and into Americans’ jobs, schools, communities, and politics.
On July 6, for example, two Indian-origin Democrats pushed a plan that would welcome millions of immigrant workers from India.
The plan was drafted by the president of the influential Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden, and the center’s senior director of Immigration Policy, Debu Ghandi. Tanden was a top advisor to Joe Biden, and Ghandi formerly worked for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Il).
Their plan claims that it “Secures and controls the border to stop illegal immigration,” but then urges many alternative legal routes for migrants to enter, offsetting potential labor shortages that might force employers to raise wages or invest in labor-saving machinery. The plan’s proposals for Indian mass migration and amnesty include:
Expand immigration opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs to start or run businesses to spur job growth in the United States and for workers in shortage occupations, such as caregiving and primary care medicine.
Make it easier for the United States to retain graduates of U.S. colleges and universities in STEM fields to increase American competitiveness and foster innovation.
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Authorize sufficient additional immigrant visas to clear the backlog for [Indian] immigrant workers and Americans’ [chain-migration] family members who qualify for lawful permanent residence and have waited in line for five or more years.
Supplement the existing family-and employment-based system with a new, targeted points-based system driven directly by the labor demands of the U.S. economy.
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Create a new safe, orderly legal pathway for crime victims similar to the refugee admissions program.
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Establish a secure, fair, workable pathway for longtime undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than ten years — more than five years for Dreamers — to obtain lawful permanent residence, followed by eligibility to receive citizenship in the future.
The plan echoes President George W. Bush’s “Any Willing Worker” scheme that would have allowed U.S. employers to hire poor people from around the world instead of hiring Americans. The Tanden plan also echoes the economic priorities of the Indian government, which is seeking to migrate many Indians into Americans’ jobs, schools, and legislatures.
The plan is chiefly intended to boost the inflow of migrants — mostly of whom will vote Democratic — which will worsen the damage to Americans’ wages, productivity, and innovation caused since 1990.
In contrast, leading GOP and business leaders are sketching plans to expand opportunities for Americans in a high-productivity, high-wage economy.
But President Trump is showing signs of bending under pressure from business interests — and his agriculture secretary — to expand the inflow of low-wage workers, apartment-sharing renters, and government-subsidized consumers.
