Bernie Sanders touts an immigration plan that would broaden access to jobs in the United States for those living across the world. But he didn't always feel that way.

The Vermont senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, as a gadfly political candidate in 1974, railed against the presence of 351 Jamaican guest workers in his state's apple orchards, which were seeing a record harvest.

For socialist Sanders, then 33, the situation supported his contention that businesses were yet again selling out U.S. residents in favor of cheap labor.

Sanders has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Trump administration's treatment of immigrants and has pledged to overhaul what he sees as an inhumane system.

But the words of a younger Sanders reflect a more complicated approach to immigration than his presidential campaign advertises — and shows the Left's evolution on immigration issues. For decades, unions opposed guest worker programs such as Vermont's in the mid-1970s. Increasing the supply of foreign labor was often seen as a plot by the Republicans and the wealthy to drive down wages and exploit workers.

Back in 1974, Sanders's rhetorical target was local orchard owners. Vermonters, in their view, were unwilling to do the grueling work, which involved carrying around a ladder and heavy bucket of apples for eight hours a day. The orchard owners said that Jamaicans had more flexibility and experience in agricultural work. Unlike native Vermonters, they were under no expectation of permanent employment.

Sanders, in his second gubernatorial bid of the decade, among several losses for higher office before he finally won the Burlington mayoralty in 1981 and then moved to Congress a decade later, was running under the socialist Liberty Union Party. Sanders attacked state officials for accommodating the Jamaican immigrants and implying that native workers were "lazy."

"With the Vermont unemployment rate one of the highest in the nation, I could never support importing foreign workers when our own people are out of work," said Sanders, who was collecting unemployment insurance at the time.

The state's employment security commissioner defended the program, praising the guest workers for "pick[ing] apples like crazy from sunup to sunset" at rates far greater than U.S. citizens.

"It sounds like she wants to bring slavery back to Vermont," replied Sanders about his state, then more than 99% white (today, it's about 91% white).

At the time, Vermont suffered from an unemployment rate hovering around 9%, much higher than the national average of 5.6%. Local college graduates complained about being unable to find work, often choosing apple picking to get by.

Agricultural workers from Jamaica and other Caribbean nations have been brought to the Northeast since the 1940s. In Upstate New York and Vermont, many immigrants have long complained about racial discrimination and abuse from locals in the overwhelmingly white communities where they've lived.

Race-based issues were often complicated for Sanders and others on the far left. In 1972, Sanders praised the populist instincts of segregationist George Wallace as "sensitive to what people feel they need," though he condemned the Alabama Democratic governor's racism in other writings.

Radicals such as Sanders sought to protect what they saw as a working class suffering from de-industrialization and stagnating wages, while also guarding against inflaming racial tensions locally.

Many of those workers began moving to the Republican Party, which shared their more conservative outlook on social issues. But Sanders had little affinity for the Democratic Party, which he consistently griped had completely forgotten their natural voting base in favor of chasing a liberal coastal elite. Sanders served most of his nearly three decades in Congress as an independent, only becoming a Democrat to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020.

In Congress, Sanders opposed proposals to allow more foreign workers into the country, citing the impact of immigration on native wages. Such opposition was not uncommon, with center-left Democrats such as President Bill Clinton promising to clamp down on illegal immigration as president.

In 2007, Sanders stood with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to oppose an immigration reform bill pushed by Republican President George W. Bush and called for tougher border security.

"I think as you've heard today, sanctions against employers who employ illegal immigrants is virtually nonexistent. Our border is very porous," Sanders said during a press conference at the time. “And I think at a time when the middle class is shrinking, the last thing we need is to bring over in a period of years, millions of people into this country who are prepared to lower wages for American workers."

Even as the two parties realigned on their openness to immigration, Sanders remained skeptical of its supposed benefits.

"I think from a moral responsibility, we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty," he said in a 2015 interview. "But you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer."

Sanders's campaign has defended his past positions by saying they came not from hostility to foreigners but out of a belief that previous immigration reform efforts did not do enough to protect workers from exploitation.

His current presidential platform reflects a radical departure from his past, with promises to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and decriminalizing illegal border crossings. Sanders's immigration plan would also put a moratorium on any deportations until an extensive federal review is completed.