In Thursday night's debate, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders briefly exchanged words over his vote against the 2007 comprehensive immigration reform bill that John McCain and Ted Kennedy wrote and that both Clinton and Barack Obama supported, while Sanders and most Republicans plus some Democrats were opposed. Sanders cited as his motive opposition to the bill's guest worker provisions, which he said were bad because a Southern Poverty Law Center investigation had likened conditions in existing agricultural guest worker programs to slavery.

It's interesting to compare this with what he said about the bill at the time on Lou Dobbs's show. Dobbs, for those who've forgotten, was a business news broadcaster who refashioned himself as a somewhat Trump-esque anti-immigration, anti–trade deal populist in the mid-aughts.

If you watch the interview you'll see that Sanders isn't particularly interested in working conditions for guest workers and he's also not narrowly focused on the H2 programs the SPLC report was about — he also talks about H1 programs for skilled workers that, whatever their flaws, are clearly not slavery.

Dobbs is opposed to the whole idea of "amnesty," which Sanders was not, but Sanders also doesn't argue with Dobbs about it. Sanders doesn't really say anything about the costs and benefits to immigrants themselves — whether that's people who've been living illegally in the United States or potential future guest workers — one way or another. His focus is on the idea that "what happens in Congress is to a very significant degree dictated by big-money interests" and that "I don't know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are now."

DOBBS: The future of the so-called grand amnesty compromise is highly uncertain tonight. Many senators opposing that legislation. The only independent senator in the Senate is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. And he joins me now. Senator, good to have you with us.

SANDERS: Good to be with you, Lou.

DOBBS: Senator, this is a tortured process that Senator Harry Reid is directing, aided and abetted by the so-called grand bargainers. Do you expect this thing to survive cloture?

SANDERS: It's hard to say at this point. It really is. I hope very much that in its present form it does not survive. I think it needs a lot more work on it, especially looking at the economic implications of these guest worker programs.

DOBBS: You know, as we look at these numbers, they're absolutely startling. President Bush, you've looked at these numbers just as I have. The president is doing horribly. Only Nixon on the verge of impeachment had a lower approval rating than George W. Bush who has now the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. But Congress, 14 percent approval in the Gallup poll, the lowest in just about 35 years.

Is there any sense amongst your colleagues in the Senate, there in Washington, that it is time for people to begin to represent their constituents rather than these special interests, corporate interests ...

SANDERS: You've got it. And that's exactly the situation and of course there is concern on at least some of our parts. The reality is that I think a growing number of Americans understand that what happens in Congress is to a very significant degree dictated by big money interests.

And these guys are basing their - their whole ideology is based on greed. They're selling out American workers and in fact they're selling out our entire country and that is a major struggle that we have got to engage in to take back our country from these very powerful and wealthy special interests.

DOBBS: These special interests, and you and I have talked about this. It is now so blatant, so overt, that only those who would refuse to see could deny that both the Democratic and Republican parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate America and special interests including in the amnesty legislation, socioethnic- centric interest groups who really have very little regard for the traditions of this country, the values of this country or the constituents.

It is seemingly impossible to awaken our elected officials in Washington to their moral responsibility. There are wonderful people — including yourself — I don't mean to suggest that everyone is in this situation, only the majority, unfortunately in the Senate and the House. Is there any hope that we can change that?

SANDERS: Of course there is hope that we can change that. And I think there are a growing number of Americans who understand that there's something wrong when the middle class in this country continues to shrink despite a huge increase in worker productivity, poverty continues to increase. Since Bush has been president, 5 million more Americans have slipped into poverty. Six million Americans more have lost their health insurance and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider.

So when President Bush tells you how great the economy is doing, what he is really saying is that the CEOs of large multinationals are doing very, very well. He's kind of ignoring the economic reality of everybody else and that gets us to the immigration issue.

If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don't know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are now.

DOBBS: And as we know, the principal industries which hire the bulk of illegal aliens, that is construction, landscaping ...

SANDERS: Lou, I just heard something.

DOBBS: Those are all industries in which wages are declining. I don't hear that discussed on the Senate floor by the proponents of this amnesty legislation.

SANDERS: That's right. They have no good response. I read something today that a lot of people coming into this country are coming in as lifeguards. I guess we can't find - that's right. We can't American workers to work as lifeguards. And the H1B program has teachers, elementary school teachers. Well, you know.

DOBBS: And that H1B program, we got to watch Senator Ted Kennedy watch there with the sole witness being one Bill Gates, the world's richest man, telling him he wanted unlimited H1B visas, obviously uninformed to the fact that seven out of 10 visas under the H1B program goes to Indian corporations that are outsourcing those positions to American corporations in this country and that four out of five of those jobs that are supposed to be high-skilled jobs are actually category one jobs which is low skill.

SANDERS: Well, you raise a good point, in that this whole immigration guest worker program is the other side of the trade issue. On one hand you have large multinationals trying to shut down plants in the America, move to China and on the other hand you have the service industry bringing in low wage workers from abroad. The result is the same — middle class gets shrunken and wages go down.

DOBBS: Senator Bernie Sanders, we thank you for being with us, as always.

SANDERS: My pleasure.