Will Tim Walz Offer an Affirmative Case for Immigration at Tonight’s Debate?
In the weeks after former President Donald Trump stood on a debate stage and declared (falsely) that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, another presidential candidate stood literally and rhetorically with the falsely accused community.
It wasn’t Vice President Kamala Harris or her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
It was Chase Oliver, the Libertarian, who visited Springfield last month to eat, chat, and attend church in the town that was unwillingly thrust into the center ring of this stupid political circus thanks to a missing cat (that was later found alive), a bunch of social media post, a literal Nazi, and then the likes of Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio).
“It is clear that this is a city suffering a trauma brought on by false social media posts and a GOP candidate who was happy to stoke those flames of division,” Oliver told Reason. “The people are tired and didn’t deserve all of this unwanted attention brought on by rumor, speculation, and bigotry toward immigrants.”
Oliver’s response to the controversy in Springfield has been markedly different from what Harris and Walz have done—and the difference matters.
Yes, Harris did a fine enough job of laughing at Trump’s absurd claims when the two candidates faced one another at that debate last month. In the weeks since then, however, Harris has missed an opportunity to do what Oliver has done. It’s one thing to attack Trump and Vance for being deliberately unhinged from reality (which they are). It’s quite another to make an affirmative case about the importance of immigration and the fundamental value of immigrants as human beings.
Tonight’s debate between Walz and Vance will offer another opportunity for that to happen—because we will almost certainly be treated to another round of discussion about the Haitians in Springfield, and about immigration in general.
When that discussion inevitably occurs, I’ll be watching to see how Walz handles it. Can he move beyond the snark and mockery of Vance’s absurd claims? Will he make a real defense of immigration and of the temporary protected status (TPS) program that allows Haitians to come here to work, legally, and that Vance says should be abolished?
To be clear, there is a wide gap between what Trump and Harris are promising to do with regard to immigration. Trump wants “the largest deportation operation in American history” and has threatened to end birthright citizenship (which would be almost impossible to do since it would require amending t
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