Harris’s PR stunt in Guatemala by Don Frost

            Vice President Harris went to Guatemala earlier this month to tell the citizens there, “Do not come, do not come.” Ostensibly she was addressing Guatemalans, but in reality she was addressing Americans who are growing concerned over the border crisis President Biden promised he could solve as soon as Donald Trump was out of the way. Well, Trump is gone and mobs of illegals are swarming the border – and getting turned loose in America – in numbers even greater than when Trump was president.

     Unless Harris is as naïve and out of her depth as she appears to be, she knows perfectly well the surge in migrants northward – that began the day Biden took office – will continue no matter what she says. When Biden was pandering for Hispanic votes last November, he vowed that no one would be turned away at the border and now he’s stuck with the results of that stupid pledge. Hispanic voters in America took note and they mean to hold him to that promise.

     One of the biggest factors driving Guatemalans northward is rampant corruption at the highest level of their government. That includes the country’s president, Alejandro Giammattel. Last May two lawyers, well-known critics of Giammattel, were arrested, possibly/probably to silence them.

     Guatemala’s version of our Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, is wallowing in charges of influence peddling and corruption. Gloria Porras, an outspoken crusader against corruption, was elected to a second term in congress, but Giammattel’s party, which controls the congress, refused to seat her.

     Asked point-blank to comment on criticism of his record on corruption, Giammattel at first ignored the question. When pressed by American journalists he got angry, claiming there were absolutely no allegations of corruption against him.

     This is the guy Harris, with Biden’s hearty approval, plans to let oversee the spending of millions, or perhaps billions, of American dollars to stem the flow of migrants to our border with Mexico. She calls it “humanitarian and economic aid,” and an “investment.” When a corporate CEO says he plans to invest in something there is a reasonable expectation of a return of some value. When a politician says he plans to invest in something, more often than not it simply means he plans to shovel funds down a bottomless rat hole.

     Harris’s proposed “investment” consists of the U.S. State, Justice, and Treasury Departments working on anti-corruption investigations while training local Guatemalan law enforcement officials on how to investigate corruption on their own. This requires the naïve assumption that those same local law enforcement officials are not themselves corrupt.

       Nevertheless, Harris swears this “investment” will “get to the root cause” of Guatemalan’s mass exodus northward. That phrase has an all-too familiar ring to it. It was invoked frequently by “liberals” in America over the last several decades to justify spending billions to solve the problems of crime, drugs, and murders plaguing city slums all over the country. This cash was to be used for jobs training to give youths hope and to build and staff recreation centers where youths could go to escape gangs. Thus crime, drugs, and murders would plummet. How has that been working out?

            The thing about “getting to the root cause” of any problem is that under the very best conditions it takes years to bear fruit. By then everyone forgets who conned American taxpayers into believing this particular “investment” was not doomed from its inception like all the others.

     It would be an insult to Biden and Harris to suggest they actually believe programs that have been dismal failures in America will work in Guatemala.

      I won’t insult them. They’re blowing hot air and they know it. But they’re stuck with the Democratic Party’s play book; the party’s universal solution to all problems anywhere and everywhere: “Throw money at it.” The bottom line is that American taxpayers will be out a great deal of money; Guatemalan migrants will continue the rush to our border; and crime and corruption in Guatemala will not only continue, but it will gain a new impetus with all that gringo money just waiting to be distributed among the government’s elite and their friends.

     One final thought on Harris’s public relations stunt in Guatemala: She was asked why, since she was in the area, she wasn’t going to stop at the U.S./Mexico border, epicenter of the crisis. Her response was that she didn’t need to go there because she’d been to the border when she was a senator. Who, you might ask, was president when she was a senator? That’s right; Donald Trump. When she was a senator and visiting the border, “liberal” reporters in tow, she blamed Trump for every border problem she eagerly pointed out to them.

     Naïve she is and out of her depth, but she’s still a politician and smart enough not to shine a spotlight on the hash she and Biden have made regarding illegal immigration in general and at the southern border in particular.

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