Bernie Sanders Can’t Escape Questions About 2007 Vote on Immigration Overhaul
New York Times First Draft looks at how immigration continues to be a sticking point for Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders has sought to build his base of support beyond the overwhelmingly white supporters he has in his home state of Vermont. But he could face continuing questions about his vote against a comprehensive immigration overhaul bill in 2007, as he did during the first Democratic presidential debate last week. His language at the time was starkly economic about guest-worker visas, which were viewed skeptically by organized labor.
“Why should Latino voters trust you now when you left them at the altar at the moment when reform was very close?” Juan Carlos López, a panelist and an anchor on CNN en Español asked in the debate last week about the senator’s vote against that bill. “I didn’t leave anybody at the altar,” Mr. Sanders replied. “I voted against that piece of legislation because it had guest-worker provisions in it, which the Southern Poverty Law Center talked about being semi-slavery. Guest workers are coming in, they’re working under terrible conditions, but if they stand up for their rights, they’re thrown out of the country. I was not the only progressive to vote against that legislation for that reason. Tom Harkin, a very good friend of Hillary Clinton’s and mine, one of the leading labor advocates, also voted against that.” He added, “Progressives did vote against that for that reason. My view right now — and always has been — is that when you have 11 million undocumented people in this country, we need comprehensive immigration reform, we need a path toward citizenship, we need to take people out of the shadows.”
But Mr. Sanders was part of an effort by liberal Democrats to kill the bill that year. His language at the time often related not to the concerns of the workers receiving the visas, but to the bill’s impact on American wage-earners. And those words are at odds with how much of the Democratic Party currently discusses immigration overhaul, all but guaranteeing he will continue to be asked to clarify his views.
KJ