Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Courtesy of Kennedy 2024.
Even Democrats are getting tired of Joe Biden’s “no border” policy. With illegal immigrants flowing into sanctuary cities such as New York like a tidal wave, even Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is asking for more border security. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who is still currently running for president as a Democrat (though it is widely thought that he will announce an independent run on October 9), has offered a different choice on immigration. In the Los Angeles Daily News, Allyson Vergara reports on Kennedy’s different approach, writing:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought his longshot 2024 presidential campaign to Los Angeles on Friday, Sept. 15, seeking support from California’s massive base of Latino voters keen for solutions to the nation’s immigration woes but amid a wary eye from many in his own party – Democrats – who say his policy vision aligns more with the harshest critics of the Biden administration.
On one hand, the event — pegged on the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month and less than two miles from the site where his father, Robert F. Kennedy, was killed nearly 60 years ago while running for president — had the markings of the kind of support Kennedy Jr.’s uncle, John, the late president, or his father, might have wanted.
A mariachi group and folklórico dancers opened the campaign stop at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles, where more than 300 people were gathered to hear Kennedy Jr. speak.
On one level, the scene conjured up a history of decades-old alliances between the Kennedy family and Latinos, forged in the struggle for farmworker rights. On the other, this was a Kennedy campaign descending on a solidly blue state with a message often bucking his own party and the president who leads it.
On immigration, Kennedy Jr. echoes many conservatives’ perspectives on what is seen as a “border crisis,” in which “ruthless criminal cartels” have made drugs and human smuggling what he says is a multibillion-dollar business, according to his website. He blames fellow Democrat and his opponent, Biden, and current border enforcement rules for escalating the situation.
“We need wide walls, but also we need wide gates,” Kennedy Jr. said on Friday. “Mexican drug cartels are running our U.S. immigration system now… we need to work with Mexico instead of alienating them.”
It’s a message that resonates with many who lean to the right on the issue. But he tempered the rhetoric with what he said is his “humanitarian” approach, compared to proposed border policies he sees as grounded in xenophobia and bigotry.
“We need wide walls, but also we need wide gates,” Kennedy Jr. said on Friday. “Mexican drug cartels are running our U.S. immigration system now… we need to work with Mexico instead of alienating them.”
It’s a message that resonates with many who lean to the right on the issue. But he tempered the rhetoric with what he said is his “humanitarian” approach, compared to proposed border policies he sees as grounded in xenophobia and bigotry.
Read more here.
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