It hasn’t even been a month since Joe Biden tossed the border crisis – sorry, the “border challenge” – to Vice President Kamala Harris like the political hot potato it is, but just look at all she has accomplished in that time. Now, that probably didn’t take long on account of the fact she has yet to actually do anything.

Biden called his VP “the most qualified person to do it,” but so far all she has accomplished is an impressive accumulation of criticism for lack of action. Now, with her ears likely still burning from the scathing comments, she has decided it’s finally time to make a show of going to Guatemala and Mexico to address the “root of the problem” – though she’s still avoiding the actual border facilities themselves. Will this “high-level diplomacy” cover her backside on the border, or is it too little, too late?

High-Level Diplomacy

It’s no secret that the new VP has thus far bungled her very first major assignment. Liberty Nation’s Dave Patterson summarized the situation quite neatly:

“The first female vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, has been given her first responsibility in office: address the U.S. border crisis. But she seems to be absent without leave, or AWOL, and some have described her as missing in action, or MIA.”

But that’s okay – her real job, according to the administration, is to get with these foreign leaders to tackle the “root causes” of illegal immigration. It isn’t for her to show up at the border and personally attempt to solve that problem – or “challenge,” as they’re calling it. To actually show up and check in at the border – which, some argue, is the only way to gain necessary information for these international talks – would be to admit there’s a real problem. As White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield put it, “what’s she’s doing is high-level diplomatic work that is incredibly important to our economic stability in the hemisphere.”

So, rather than doing anything that might make a tangible difference, Harris is heading south for Guatemala with a stop in Mexico … eventually. “We have plans in the works to go to Guatemala as soon as possible,” Harris said. In the meantime, she can be found picking up German chocolate cake from a Chicago bakery – perhaps her solution to the cold, hungry, huddled masses in border facilities is to let them eat cake – or calling such world leaders as Justin Trudeau and Benjamin Netanyahu, presumably working to end the illegal migration of all those rogue Canadians and Israelis coming up through the Mexican border.

Talk It Out: The Obvious Solution

Let’s give Vice President Harris the benefit of the doubt and assume she actually means to meet with these leaders and solve the root causes of migration. How? As LN Managing Editor Mark Angelides pointed out, “Mexico is refusing to take back many migrants who, under President Trump’s Title 42 regulation, would have had to await review south of the border.” If Mexico won’t work with the U.S. to house would-be immigrants while they await review for refugee status, why would anyone think the notoriously corrupt governments of Mexico, Guatemala, or any other south of the border nation would actually solve the issues at home that put their people in such dire straits to begin with? Does the Biden administration really believe this hasn’t been tried dozens of times already – that, somehow, every other administration missed this glaringly simple solution, to just talk it out?

The United States has already sent $95 million to Guatemala this year. In the last three years combined, Guatemala has made off with nearly $360 million in American tax dollars. Does that money go to fixing the problems there? Of course not. If it did, we wouldn’t have masses of Guatemalan refugees flooding across the border. The U.S. government can’t solve this problem. Period. It can’t just throw Americans’ money at it until it goes away, it can’t send Kamala Harris to Guatemala to either lay down the law or hug it out with her Central American counterpart – or whatever it is she has in mind – and it certainly can’t expect to stop the influx of immigrants while Democrats go about growing the welfare state and opening the border, then loudly decrying anyone who objects as a racist.

But this “plan” to go to Guatemala isn’t about tackling the root causes of immigration; it’s about covering Kamala’s behind on the border issue. Biden’s promises exacerbated the problem, and he punted to her. She didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing. That didn’t fly with the people, and now she has to do – or, more accurately, say – something to get folks off her back. And that’s all this is – talk. “We have plans in the works …” “as soon as possible …” These aren’t words of action; they’re just a way to kick the can on down the road.

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Read more from James Fite.