“Many advocates knew the consequences of inaction. To learn more or opt-out, read our Bernie Sanders was once wary of immigrant workers.

“Our movement sees him as a partner.”Bernie Sanders’s evolution on immigration, explained Currently, children can be kept in detention for as long as 20 days. )But perhaps his most significant break with Democrats on immigration came when he was a freshman senator in 2007. In 1996, he broke with a majority of Democrats in Congress byHe has also supported bills that would have made victims of Sanders backed every version of the DREAM Act — a bill that would have offered a path to citizenship for young unauthorized immigrants who came to the US as children — since 2007. Arguably the most ambitious of any Democratic … The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. While Sanders previously insinuated that he would pause all deportations, his campaign manager Faiz Shakir “This is not what we mean by a moratorium, but we expect to have to push [for] a Sanders presidency,” Tania Unzueta, a spokesperson for Mijente, Sanders’s plan also acknowledges that unauthorized immigrants are particularly vulnerable to abuses at the hands of employers because they might fear retaliation that could put them at risk of deportation.
About. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. Friends of Bernie Sanders will never charge for these updates, but carrier message & data rates may apply. )He suggests offering immigrant workers whistleblower protections if they speak up about workplace abuses and improving labor standards for farmworkers, domestic workers, gig economy workers, and those employed in other underregulated industries. One piece of this is the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which would “provide domestic workers with at least a $15 minimum wage, strong protections for collective bargaining, workers’ rights, workplace safety, and fair scheduling,” regardless of immigration status.“For too long, employers have exploited undocumented immigrants and guest workers to violate labor laws, skirt the minimum wage, and maximize their own profits,” the plan reads. Bernie’s Story.

Instead, he’s focusing on what the two groups have in common: Both need protection from abusive employers and big business, higher wages, better health care, and access to higher education. And he once voted for an amendment supporting a group of vigilantes that sought to take immigration enforcement into their own hands along the border (though he has since disavowed the group.) He consequently suggests redirecting funding from enforcing immigration laws against workers to holding their employers accountable for labor law violations. Text STOP to 67760 to stop receiving messages. Sanders voted against President George W. Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform bill — a decision that drew criticism from Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. Warren and Castro support a pathway to legal status, but neither has offered a time frame.Former Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, hasn’t released a detailed immigration platform, but came out against the decriminalization of border crossings during the second Democratic primary debate. What is heartening is to see that commitment to the rights and needs of workers married with a deeper understanding of the priorities of the immigrant community writ large,” Altschuler said. The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable.

US workers feel those costs, too: In a system where unauthorized immigrants aren’t encouraged to come forward, bad-apple employers can get away with paying all their employees pittance wages.The coalition was consequently focused on keeping the legislation alive in the Senate so that it could be amended in the House — an effort that Sanders helped stymie.“We needed the legislation to move forward in the Senate with the hope of improving it,” Martínez-de-Castro said.
He would also allow them to participate in Medicare-for-all and That message has taken on new urgency in light of Trump administration immigration raids targeting unauthorized workers over the past year. But he no longer suggests immigrant workers and American-born ones are pitted against each other. Can’t do it. “The president did the best thing that was able to be done at the time,” Biden replied. He appeared to believe that the US has an obligation not only to protect its own workers from economic migrants but also to offer refuge to those who need it. (All of Sanders’s votes were, essentially, symbolic: None of the votes ended up being close. Sanders’s views on immigration were influenced by the labor movement, which for decades Sanders has supported legalizing the US’s unauthorized immigrant population since at least “It does not make a lot of sense to me to bring hundreds of thousands of those workers into this country to work for minimum wage and compete with Americans kids,” Sanders That’s earned him praise in conservative circles: Both Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA, which advocates for dramatically restricting immigration, and Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa “I think in his gut he believes his obligation as president would be to the workers of America, not to the workers of the world,” Beck said.Sanders has never had to answer to a large immigrant constituency. And he’s now embracing the most progressive immigration proposals of the field, including placing a moratorium on deportations (He still believes that immigrants who aren’t paid a living wage will drive down wages overall.