Subject: Re: Harris isn't really black?
Because Biden would not enforce it....

I think this reflects a very optimistic (or naive) view of politicians and political pressures.

I can understand believing that Biden's personal ideology on immigration might lead him towards declining to enforce restrictive measures - maybe. He's a Democrat, and the Democratic party has generally been less inclined to restrictionism of late. Though Biden has always come from the labor/centrist wing of the party, which has generally been less in favor of immigration than other parts of the coalition.

But politicians and parties are never pure. They always respond to political pressures. They'll do things that violate their platform, and which enrage parts of their coalition, if they need to do so in order to win elections.

For example, one would never have pegged California Democrats as being willing to take strict measures to roust the homeless, which are anathema to the "bleeding heart" liberal faction of the party. Yet here we are, with Gavin Newsom and London Breed ripping out encampments and threatening to put homeless folks in jail if they refuse to go to shelters. Clearly that's not what you would expect the archetypical California Democrat to do....but when electoral pressures start to ramp up, needs must.

For a recent example on the GOP side, consider Trump's evisceration of the party platform on cutting back entitlement programs, or candidates' walking back of their maximalist positions on abortion (national ban, rape and incest, 6 weeks vs. later). The "pure" conservative would be against these steps towards the left, but everyone realizes you need to win elections.

Biden had already capitulated on immigration, because it was killing his re-election campaign and weighing down the entire party. The border was a top issue and major pain point for him and Democrats, and they wanted the pain to go away. They were basically begging for these additional powers so that something could be done to mitigate the problem. Democrats were being blasted by the immigration wing of their base....and they didn't care, told them to pound sand, because they needed to fix it.

So it's rather ridiculous to assume that Biden wouldn't use the powers in the bill. They'd already taken the political hit for it. They'd already disappointed/betrayed/infuriated the part of their base that pushes back on immigration controls as inhumane. Having done that, it's kind of crazy to think that they wouldn't cash in so that they could reap the political benefits of what they had paid the cost for.