GOP wants to hold Harris’s immigration record against her - what did she do?

As vice-president, Harris was handed a daunting mission at the onset of her term: to address the "root causes" of migration from the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But at no point was she put in charge of border policy. That is the responsibility of the Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, who was with Harris when she visited the border in June 2021, three months after she was given the assignment. 

Instead, Harris's mandate, as laid out by the president, was to meet with government officials and private sector partners to tackle enduring problems in the region, such as poverty, violence and a lack of economic opportunity, that drive people to migrate from their home countries to the United States, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior adviser of immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

"It was a diplomatic and development focus," she said, "not a border focus."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/27/kamala-harris-immigration-republicans

Why Poverty Persists in America - The New York Times

In Tommy Orange's novel, "There There," a man trying to describe the problem of suicides on Native American reservations says: "Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they're jumping." 

The poverty debate has suffered from a similar kind of myopia. For the past half-century, we've approached the poverty question by pointing to poor people themselves — posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits — when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, or every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not: Why don't you find a better job? Or: Why don't you move? Or: Why don't you stop taking out payday loans? But: Who is feeding off this?…

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html

Poll: Americans overwhelmingly approve of 'root causes' immigration strategy | TheHill

…Pollster Civiqs found that 85 percent of survey respondents agreed that the United States needs to engage with other countries to address migration patterns…

https://thehill.com/latino/550982-poll-americans-overwhelmingly-approve-of-root-causes-immigration-strategy