Democratic Candidates on the Issues - Immigration | Only A Bill

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Democratic Candidates on the Issues - Immigration

By Bill | August 17, 2007 | Email This Post

Today we’ll take a brief look at where the Democratic candidates stand on the issue of immigration. Direct comparisons are a bit tricky for two reasons: first, rarely do the candidates address the same question in the same context, and so forth. Second, and a bit damning in my opinion, is that several of them don’t make explicit what they think on this particular issue; I can only assume two reasons for that and neither is very flattering. Either their own position is so ill-defined that they can’t express it properly (in which case they have no business running for President) or they hesitate to make their position easy to reference because they want the ability to change what they’re saying based on the political wind. Either way, bad.

To start with, here’s a table listing common immigration themes that have come up in interview after interview, and then I’ll go a bit into each candidate individually. Note that it’s entirely possible that they’ve expressed an opinion at some point in their careers that I haven’t captured here. I was looking for official, clearly stated positions, not implications I would have to dig up.

Candidate	Require English?	Military to secure the border?	Fine illegals?	Mass deportation?	Penalize employers?
Joe Biden	Yes	?	Yes	No	Yes
Hillary Clinton	Yes¹	?	Yes	No	?
Chris Dodd	?	?	?	?	?
John Edwards	Yes	No	Yes	No	?
Mike Gravel	?	?	?	?	?
Dennis Kucinich	No²	No	No	No	No
Barack Obama	Yes	?	Yes	No	Yes
Bill Richardson	?	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

¹Hillary says: “try to get them to learn English”.
²Based on Kucinich’s support for bilingual education.

Common themes? All the Democratic candidates are against mass deportation; all are also for a path of some kind to legal citizenship for illegal aliens. Other than that, there’s a lot of similar sounding language by which each candidate probably means something different.

Now, on to each candidate:

Joe Biden:

His official web site doesn’t have immigration listed as a separate issue as of today. However, in this video:

…Joe tells us that illegal immigrants should be returned to the border where they can get an ID card and enter the path to citizenship assuming they pass a background check, prove they have a job and pay into social security. Biden also would jail employers who knowingly employ illegal aliens.

Hillary Clinton

As with Biden, her official web site makes Clinton’s exact position on immigration tough to find. However, her Senate page offers this: “Our current immigration laws need to be reformed: we need a better solution to the question of illegal immigration…. America is strengthened when immigrants have access to health care and education that will enable them to become fully participating members of our society.” In another interview, Clinton advocates deporting criminals, tracking immigrants in a registry, making them pay back taxes and fines, learn English and “stay out of trouble.”

Chris Dodd

Dodd’s official website was perhaps the least helpful of all those I visited, proving that some candidates and their handlers still don’t have a clue about how to use the Internet. However, I did find one blog interview in which Dodd offered no specifics, but did say “We need comprehensive immigration reform that will secure our borders and strengthen the path toward legal immigration for the millions of workers already here, while requiring of them that they pay taxes, obey the laws and learn English. We need to also put tough penalties in place for businesses that break the law.” He also promises to address what he sees as the underlying cause of the immigration problem, “poverty and instability” south of the border.

John Edwards

Edwards’ official web site led me to a YouTube video in which he talks about immigration:

His themes: More effort in border security, fine illegals for having violated the law but provide earned citizenship for longtime residents, and require that immigrants learn to speak English. He urges that everyone be treated with dignity and respect.

Mike Gravel

Gravel’s web site offers: “Senator Gravel favors protecting our borders and monitoring the flow of illegal immigrants into our country. He also favors a guest worker program and setting up naturalization procedures that would fairly bring existing illegal immigrants into legal status.”

Dennis Kucinich

Kucinich’s web site is, perhaps predictably, one of the most informative about where the candidate stands on immigration. Even more so is a YouTube video he made on the subject:

Kucinich blames the recent flood of immigration on NAFTA; if elected, he promises to do away with it and re-enter bilateral trade agreements contingent on our partners improving conditions for people in their country, which he believes will reduce the incentive for people to come here. Kucinich would grant a legal resident status for illegal immigrants that have lived here for five years, and a worker status for those that have been here less than five years. He’s for bilingual education, against prosecuting employers, and against using the military to secure our borders, saying “Border security is a job for state and local authorities, not soldiers or vigilantes.”

Barack Obama

Obama’s web site does a good job of summarizing where he stands: Secure the borders, crack down on employers, increase the number of legal immigrations slots, reduce immigration application fees, produce better background checks, and provide illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship as long as they pay a fine, learn English, and don’t commit a crime.

Bill Richardson

Richardson’s web site offers these positions: He’s against the border fence (”Building a fence will not increase security”) but he would double the number of border guards and increase surveillance technology. He would also use the military to help secure the border. He would provide a path to citizenship contingent on learning English, paying back taxes and fines, and passing a background check. Richardson would also crack down on employers, and offer a reward to informants with information about human traffickers and document forgers.

My Reactions

Big negatives to everyone for not being specific. They all support a “path to citizenship” - okay, great, what does that mean in terms of what the immigrants will have to actually do?
Several candidates (Biden, Clinton, Edwards, Obama, and Richardson) mentioned fining illegal aliens. Edwards specifically mention the fine as an acknowledgment that, valuable as the illegal immigrants may be as prospective citizens, they are in fact law-breakers by definition. I personally think that’s an important point that I would be unwilling to let go. (Note: in their position, I would be a law-breaker myself, so no shame there.)
Dodd and Kucinich, particularly Kucinich, were the only two that were effective in tying an immigration solution to improving conditions in foreign countries. I think they’re right about that; whether or not doing something about it is a realistic promise, I’m less sure.
Congrats to John Edwards for having a search feature on his web site.
Bill Richardson’s statement that “Building a fence will not increase security” seems a bit fishy to me. There may be very good reasons not to do it, but saying that anything that makes it more difficult for people to come over the border will do no good at all is ridiculous. (Whether it will do enough good to warrant the effort is a different question.)
I was dumbfounded by Kucinich’s quote that border security is not a job for soldiers; on the contrary, it seems to me that stopping invaders at the borders is perhaps the most fundamental job of any country’s military.

Who’s the winner, in terms of my views (and what are they, anyway?) I’ll withhold comment until the next article, when I look at immigration through the Republican lens… until then, what do you think? Are there questions the candidates aren’t answering? Did I get something wrong? Put in a comment and tell the world what you think!

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