Sen. Sanders has a mixed immigration record

Bernie Sanders’ position and record on immigration has been the subject of much debate leading up to the Nevada caucuses, including a critical op ed published yesterday on Univision by Rep Luis Gutiérrez, Chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Much of Rep Gutiérrez’ (who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president) criticisms stem from Senator Sanders’ ‘No’ vote on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill of 2007. Having listened to or read many of Bernie’s speeches during the immigration reform debates in 2007 and in 2013, I think the best explanation of Bernie’s views on both bills come from a floor speech given by Sen Sanders in 2013. Firstly, Sen Sanders notes his own background as a son of an immigrant.

As the son of an immigrant--my dad came to this country at the age of 17 from Poland--I strongly support the concept of immigration reform, and I applaud the Judiciary Committee and all of those people who have been working hard on this legislation

Sen Sanders is strongly in favor of protecting immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, who are already in this country. As he said

There are a lot of provisions within this bill that I think should be strongly supported by the American people. I strongly support a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. I strongly support the DREAM Act to make sure the children of illegal immigrants who were brought into this country by their parents years ago are allowed to become citizens. I strongly support providing legal status to foreign workers on family farms. Dairy farmers in Vermont and the owners of apple orchards in my State have told me that without these workers, they would go out of business, and it is obviously true in many parts of this country.

However, Bernie has great concern with the legal immigration provisions included in both the 2007 and 2013 bills, namely the guest worker provisions, of which Bernie counts both low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants. As he stated in that same 2013 floor speech

At a time when nearly 14 percent of the American people do not have a full-time job, at a time when the middle class continues to disappear, and at a time when tens of millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, it makes no sense to me that the immigration reform bill includes a massive increase in temporary guest worker programs that will allow large corporations to import and bring into this country hundreds of thousands of temporary blue-collar and white-collar guest workers from overseas. That makes no sense to me.

He further stated

Let me be very clear. The same corporations and businesses that support a massive expansion in guest worker programs are opposed to raising the minimum wage. They have long supported the outsourcing of American jobs. They have reduced wages and benefits of American workers at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high. In too many cases, the H-2B program for lower skilled guest workers and the H-1B for high-skilled guest workers are being used by employers to drive down the wages and benefits of American workers and to replace American workers with cheap labor from abroad.

The 2007 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill Vote

This concern about immigrants, both lower skilled H-2B and high-skilled H-1B workers, driving down Americans’ wages is a long standing concern of Sen Sanders. During the 2007 debate Sen Sanders outlined his concern with that Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. He stated

Here is my concern about this legislation. At a time when millions of Americans are working longer hours for low wages and have seen real cuts in their wages and benefits, this legislation would, over a period of years, bring millions of low-wage workers from other countries into the United States. If wages are already this low in Vermont and throughout the country, what happens when more and more people are forced to compete for these jobs? Sadly, in our country today—and this is a real tragedy—over 25 percent of our children drop out of high school. In some minority neighborhoods, that number is even higher. What kind of jobs will be available for those young people?

The congressional record is clear - his objection to the 2007 immigration bill was based on his concern about immigrants lowering Americans’ wages. In debates this primary season, Bernie has excused his vote against immigration reform in 2007 saying that he voted against it because the guest worker program is akin to semi-slavery. I went through the congressional record of the 110th Congress, looking for evidence of Bernie’s concern about guest workers being treated as semi-slaves, being the reason for his ‘no’ vote. I could find none. I invite the reader to find any speech, interview or press release — any medium at all — from 2007 where Bernie Sanders stated he was voting against that bill due to his concern about guest workers being treated as semi-slaves. Sen. Sanders’ press release from that debate also clearly states his concern about protecting American workers from immigrant workers.

What concerns me," Senator Sanders said, "are provisions in the bill that would bring low-wage workers into this country in order to depress the already declining wages of American workers. With poverty increasing and the middle-class shrinking, we must not force American workers into even more economic distress."

The 2013 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill Vote

In 2013, Sen Sanders voted in favor of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, despite the 2013 version containing similar guest worker provisions.

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Why the change of vote from 2007 despite the guest worker program remaining that he previously found objectionable? Indeed, his floor speech (video above) at the time clearly mentioned the same concerns he had in 2007. He also spoke about the dangers of bringing in additional immigrant workers to the Washington Post.

The bottom line is that I feel, very much, that a lot of the initiative behind these guest workers programs, a very large expansion of guest worker programs — H2B visas would go up to as many as 195,000, H1B to as many as 205,000 a year — is coming from large corporations who want cheap labor from abroad. Absolutely, there is a need for foreign labor. I recognize that in agriculture and certain areas in the high tech industry, you need foreign labor. But this is a massive effort to attract cheap labor, a great disservice to American workers.

Senator Sanders could have pointed out that labor unions, like the AFL-CIO, which were against the 2007 bill because of views similar to Sen Sanders’, had flipped and were now supporting the 2013 version. But he didn’t. To him, the guest worker program, both low-skilled and H1-B workers, still represented a “massive effort to attract cheap labor”. Ostensibly, Sen Sanders switched his vote in 2013 because he was able to get $1.5 billion in funding included that would provide jobs for 400,000 teenagers, an amount he himself said “doesn’t go anywhere far enough”. Sanders’ willingness to trade his support for the 2013 immigration bill for the $1.5B funding for youth jobs further belies his claim of prohibitive concern about guest workers being taken advantage of. After all, demanding inclusion of this $1.5B in funding for jobs for teenagers in a seemingly unrelated bill about immigration, only makes sense if you think the immigration bill will affect jobs for young people, not if your concern is about corporations exploiting guest workers.

The cynic in me wonders if, as a veteran politician, he realized then what a disaster having two ‘no’ votes on comprehensive immigration reform would have been in a democratic presidential primary. Anyone wanting to run for President as a democrat would have realized the political necessity of finding a way to get to a ‘yes’ vote on that 2013 immigration reform bill. Indeed, only four months after that 2013 vote, Sen Sanders was openly discussing the possibility of running for president in 2016.

Strange Bedfellows

Sen Sanders’ views that immigrant workers provide a downward pressure on American wages has made for strange bedfellows with him on that topic. This is not to say that he shares the racist views of the people mentioned below who praised his views. In fact, I know he is not a racist and that he abhors the racist positions of these people. But his views about immigrants driving down American wages are so far from progressive thought that they find praise among right wing anti-immigrant zealots. For example, in 2007 he appeared on nativist bigot Lou Dobbs’ show to argue against the comprehensive immigration bill, not out of concern about guest workers’ well-being, but about the fear of these immigrant workers driving down American wages. Sen Sanders made his case, while Lou Dobbs ranted about “socio ethnic-centric interest groups who really have very little regard for the tradition of this country , the values of this country or the constituents”.

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Senator Sanders’ focus on restricting the flow of legal immigrants in order to protect American workers has also earned him praise from some embarrassing quarters

Noted bigot Rep Steve King

“I admire Bernie’s passion and I notice that his immigration position is closer to mine than it is some of the presidential candidates on the Republican side,” King said in an interview with an Iowa radio station over this past summer. “He’s said ‘Let’s take care of American workers.’ I’m all for that.”

King went further

“ and Bernie has taken some positions that I agree with. And part of his immigration policy is something that I agree with.”

Bernie’s focus on protecting Americans’ wages from immigrants is also the only explanation I can come up with for why he voted for a entirely symbolic amendment in 2006 that aimed to protect the Minutemen militia. Rep Gutiérrez states

The same year, House Republicans were playing politics on behalf of their friends in the Minutemen, the vigilantes who set up outposts at the border to hunt immigrants. Republicans even crafted a bill that played right into one of their right-wing conspiracy theories that the U.S. government was somehow guiding immigrants past the Minutemen camps in the desert. And when Republican Representative Jack Kingston put forward an amendment restricting the Department of Homeland Security from revealing information about groups like the Minutemen – a pure fantasy driven by anti-immigrant pandering to the right-wing -- Representative Sanders took the bait, split with Latinos and progressives in Congress, and voted in favor of this absurd measure.

Why would Bernie possibly have voted for this? Even racist former Rep Tom Tancredo was shocked to have learned that Bernie voted in favor of that amendment — “I certainly would never have expected it”, he said. Senator Sanders campaign could only say that the amendment was “a meaningless thing” when asked about it.

Immigration Facts

Sen Sanders’ views that immigrant workers (both high and low skilled) drive down American wages is out of step with progressive thought and research. As Think Progress states

Studies have shown that immigrants actually create jobs for American workers. Researchers recently found that each new immigrant has produced about 1.2 new jobs in the U.S., most of which have gone to native-born workers. And according to the Atlantic, an influx in immigration can cause non-tradable professions — jobs like hospitality and construction that cannot be outsourced — to see a wage increase because the demand for goods and services grows with the expanding population.

Furthermore, Sanders’ endorsers Robert Reich and MoveOn.org made a video (see below) last year combating some of the myths about immigration spewed by Donald Trump. Reich states that we need more immigrant workers and that immigrants do not take away Americans’ jobs. Bernie Sanders’ restrictive immigration views would seem to be out of step with Reich’s, and, on the narrow point about immigrants lowering American wages, alarmingly closer to Trumps’ than to progressive thinking.

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As an immigrant myself, and coming from a family of immigrants, immigration reform is personal to me. I have no doubt that a President Sanders would work to improve the lives of immigrants already in the country, including making a pathway to citizenship, enacting the DREAM act and working to end deportations. But quite frankly, I also have no doubt he views efforts to increase legal immigration with deep suspicion, and even outright hostility.