Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes part in a roundtable of young Nevadans discussing immigration as she campaigns for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, May 5, 2015. (Photo: AP)
Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate for president, said in an interview on the John Grambling radio show in Feb. 2003, that she was adamantly against illegal immigrants. Now, unsurprisingly, she is singing a different tune. In a new ad released by the RNC, Clinton sounded more like a Republican than a Democrat.
“We got to do several things and I am adamantly against illegal immigrants,” Clinton said during the interview. “Certainly, we’ve got to do more at our borders, and people have to stop hiring illegal immigrants.”
“Come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties,” Clinton continued. “Stand in the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx. You’re going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to get yard work, and construction work, and domestic work.”
Yet, at a campaign event in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Clinton vowed to protect President Obama’s executive action on immigration against “partisan attacks,” and even expand on it.
“When they talk about legal status that is code for second class status,” Clinton told a group of young Hispanics, adding she “would do everything possible under the law to go even further” unilaterally if Congress “continues to refuse to act.”
However, Clinton failed to comment on the fact the executive action has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, thus until the case is heard by the Supreme Court, the policy has been halted because the action she vows to take — as of now — is not “possible under the law.” U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in February granted the preliminary injunction requested by 26 states and temporarily blocked the president’s order. As PPD previously examined, according to the latest polls and oral arguments, the policy is losing in the courts of public and legal opinion.
Not only did President Obama’s lawyer had a rough day during arguments in April before a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the American people are “adamantly against” executive action on immigration (view polling here). But the Clinton camp obviously believes the former secretary of state must take a hard turn left if she hopes to hold together the coalition that twice carried Mr. Obama to the White House.
“That is just the beginning,” Clinton promised. “There is much more to do to expand and enhance protections for families and communities to reform immigration enforcement and detention practices so they are more humane, more targeted, and more effective. And to keep building the pressure and support for comprehensive reform.”
