Therefore … what? Where’s she going with this?

Is she suggesting that people of Latino ancestry should be immune from U.S. immigration laws? “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” yadda yadda?

But she vowed Thursday to defund ICE completely and claimed Latinos should be exempt from criminal proceedings and immigration laws because they are descended from Mesoamerican cultures that preceded the United States.

‘We are standing on native land,’ she claimed, speaking just outside the U.S. Capitol. ‘And Latino people are descendants of native people. And we cannot be told, and criminalized, simply because for our identity or our status. Period.’

Watch the clip below, via the Free Beacon. Maybe all she’s saying is that Latinos shouldn’t be stereotyped as immigrants since they’ve been part of America since before the founding. Although in that case, what does she mean by grumbling about criminalizing people with the wrong “status”?

I don’t know, man. After reading that I-can’t-believe-it’s-real part of her Green New Deal proposal about “economic security” for people “unwilling to work,” I’d say it’s as likely as not at this point that she has some form of clinical brain damage. Which, really, makes her rise to political stardom that much more inspiring.

Meanwhile, I’m dying to know how this Green New Deal fiasco got past Pelosi knowing what sort of ridicule the “unwilling to work” line and other dubious parts would attract. Two theories. One is that, for all the tributes paid to her power over her caucus, Pelosi simply isn’t as powerful as she’d like to be. Leftists are excited about socialism, AOC is their new hero, she had a dorm-room-quality platform ready to go for “environmental justice,” and so that platform was going to be published whether Nancy liked it or not. Today, in other words, is a testament to how much clout Ocasio-Cortez has already accumulated on the left. A proposal destined to embarrass the party couldn’t be suppressed by the leadership. The otherwise all-powerful Pelosi had to resort to thinly veiled snark to express her displeasure.

I prefer the second theory, though, not because it’s more plausible but because it’s more Machiavellian. In this theory, Pelosi does have the power to block AOC and her co-sponsors from going public, or at least from going public with the particular document they published — but she chooses to stand aside. She reads the part about “unwilling to work,” feels her eyes rolling nearly out of her head, but lets it proceed because she knows the only way the party’s going to be able to rein in Ocasio-Cortez is by letting her embarrass herself publicly for awhile. Pelosi might even relish having a far-left foil for the party’s eventual nominee next year: When Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or whoever is inevitably asked whether we need “economic security” for people “unwilling to work,” they can smirk and reply, “Er, no,” and then cite that fact as evidence of how moderate they are. That’s tricky business for a Democratic candidate since it risks alienating progressives by creating distance from AOC but it’s basic good politics in a general election.

Same with immigration, of course. The nominee of the open-borders party will inevitably be verrrrrry soft on border enforcement. But not quite “Latinos were here first” soft, I’m guessing.