Kamala Harris isn't just the first Black woman on major-party presidential ticket; she's the child of immigrants, an economist dad from Jamaica and a cancer-researcher mom from India. The pedigree speaks powerfully to the American story, and is yet another reason Donald Trump should be disqualified from a second term.
On the campaign trail, Trump claimed to revile illegal immigration but revere the legal kind. In his 2019 State of the Union speech, he one-upped himself, ad-libbing that he wanted to admit legal immigrants in "the largest numbers ever."
But led by the ear by his notorious anti-immigrant adviser Stephen Miller, Trump been building roadblocks in the path of legal immigrants, including the well-educated and skilled.
He endorsed a bill cutting legal immigration half. He issued a series of administrative decisions making the uphill trek to America into the steepest incline imaginable.
He used the pandemic as cover to freeze the flow of legal immigrants he had already slowed, including highly skilled immigrants who bring the biggest economic benefit. That has made it that much easier for many of the world's smartest, most enterprising people to choose Canada over the United States.
To top it off, Trump nearly doubled the cost of legal immigrants applying to become a U.S. citizen, turning the American beacon into a faint light receding on the horizon.
A supposedly focused crackdown on illegal immigration became a war on the core American promise. Vote him out.
