Point of order on this catch from Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in fact stating current US policy on immigration in this speech from yesterday … with one significant omission. See if the omission is as easy to catch as it appears:

Ocasio-Cortez on immigration: “I think that all people should be free, to be, here and in our communities” pic.twitter.com/GJIg3ihvMK — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 22, 2019

I think migration, to me, is liberation. It’s the ability to move and be — it’s the freedom to be, really, is what we’re talking about. And I think that all people should be free to here, and in our communities. Because I think that when you start viewing human beings as intrinsically valuable, you feel blessed that they have come to you with their presence. And that’s really the shift I think that we need to make as a country …

People have the “freedom to be” without migration too, but the aspirational parts of this message otherwise have broad consensus in the US. Most Americans see others as blessings, and want people who will build strong ties to their communities. That’s why most people see immigration as a net positive — when it is done legally. And right now, nearly everyone has the ability to migrate to the US through our legal immigration system, which is much more generous than most other nations. It might be a lot more generous if we could secure the southern border and control migration rationally, too.

The fact that AOC’s lecturing on the “blessing” of unexpected and unannounced migrants makes this an obvious plea for open borders and no bar on migration at all. We’ll get back to blessings in a moment, but here’s Ocasio-Cortez making more sense on another topic than perhaps even she realizes:

Ocasio-Cortez claims that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and former President George Bush are responsible for the crisis on the southern border AOC says she doesn’t understand why ICE, CBP, and the Coast Guard are all under one organization named *Homeland Security* pic.twitter.com/MDPwrpGlen — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) July 22, 2019

Saavedra might be tweaking AOC on this, but the consolidation of these agencies into Homeland Security was controversial in 2006, too. Not just a few conservatives warned of the same problems Ocasio-Cortez does in this clip — concentrating too much power into one Cabinet position, as well as having disparate missions lumped together into one umbrella. The Secret Service is also in DHS, transferred out of Treasury despite its still-extant mission to combat counterfeiting. The decision to create DHS came after the 9/11 Commission demanded a superbureaucracy to connect all intelligence agencies and a reshuffling of other organizations around defense of the US “homeland.”

That hasn’t worked out terribly well in practice, but not for the reasons cited by Ocasio-Cortez. The bureaucracy has gotten more complicated around missions such as coastal defense, emergency response, and immigration and customs enforcement. All one has to ask is whether that consolidation actually improved performance, especially on immigration enforcement, to realize that at best it was a sideways reshuffle, and more concerning a distraction and dilution of expertise in the upper structure.

However, if Ocasio-Cortez is truly concerned about creating “very largely unaccountable organization[s],” then perhaps she should explain why she favors Medicaid for All and the Green New Deal, both of which would explode the size of federal government. AOC’s entire agenda is about “consolidating power,” only to use it for her hobby horses rather than Trump’s. It’s rather rich to hear a self-professed “democratic socialist” complaining about large government agencies.

Finally, perhaps Ocasio-Cortez should be praised for this part of her speech:

Because I think that when you start viewing human beings as intrinsically valuable, you feel blessed that they have come to you with their presence.

You know who feels human beings are intrinsically valuable and are blessed by their presence? The pro-life community. Maybe AOC is ready to fight for the unborn and their intrinsic value as human beings?