Why Conservatives Praise Bernie Sanders on Immigration:

[n8dogg83]

When it comes to immigration reform, Bernie Sanders has checked all the boxes for a Democratic presidential candidate. The Vermont Senator supports a path to citizenship. He would protect the vast majority of undocumented immigrants from deportation. He’d abolish most detention centers and allow the undocumented to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Nevertheless, the liberal senator has drawn approval from some unlikely quarters.

Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA, a group that seeks to dramatically reduce legal and illegal immigration to the United States, said this week that after studying Sanders’ record and rhetoric, he sees some common ground.

“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 in an interview.


Rep. Steve King of Iowa, the adamantly pro-life co-chair of Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign who has dismissed global warming as a hoax and repeatedly supported shutting down the federal government, praised Sanders’ immigration stance several times in August.

“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.”

More at the link:


Link: http://time.com/4170591/bernie-sanders-immigration-conservatives/


A common argument against a Bernie Sanders presidency is that he wouldn't be able to get anything done. I thought this article was a good example of how the general respect and admiration of Bernie by many republicans would be more likely to result in legislation getting passed than would happen under a Clinton administration.

[Proserpina]

1. Agreed

Bernie knows how to make friends. He has the skills for the job.

[cascadiance]

2. Decent article on how populist stances can bring many from different parties together...

... for the right reasons.

Now, too many of our corporate bought legislators in both parties don't mind helping to sneak in and subsequently voting for corrupted immigration bills that will enlarge "guest labor" (indentured servant) programs like H-1B and H-2B to help their rich donors.

Many try to push the passage of these bills for the admirable pieces of these bills to help with paths to citizenship amongst other things for immigrant rights. But the guest labor provisions screw so many of us, as do things like the free trade bills, etc. as well.

Now, some on the right like Trump and now Cruz try to voice opposition to these bills to appeal to the xenophobic motivations of many of their voters to divide us as liberals and the righties on this topic.

But fundamentally, what brings us all together what either drives our concerns as progressives for global labor standards, union power, etc. to fight this or what drives the right to hate immigrants ultimately which can be engineered with them hearing about expansion of these programs, is our universal concern about we as Americans losing our jobs or having our salaries, etc. being pushed downward, which we share across party lines. It is this last concern that is where we should unite to work together to get decent legislation passed.

If we get someone like Bernie elected, I think that by protecting American jobs, we will have many on the right less actively pursuing their xenophobic goals, as the precipitating reason for that xenophobia has been alleviated. And by having a decent liberal like Bernie elected, we can perhaps have more congress people elected on his coat tails that will help increase the rights for people globally, and go beyond minimizing these guest labor programs, but helping streamline immigration for those who really want to move here to become citizens and work here, and those that just want to make a living and might be better served to having their countries serve the oligarchs less in being a "bottom" for them to feed on through these so-called "free trade" agreements. That would help both people's well being world-wide, as well as our environment, as there would be less carbon being pushed in the air if less people are moving around the world just to find a job, etc., and we can also enforce better environmental laws in these countries through better trade agreements than crap like the TPP and TtIP where typically now there is a bottom for companies that don't want to have environmental laws to deal with to race to.

[Ed Suspicious]

3. I don't know what this makes me . . .

“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,”

But I agree 100% with the sentiment and support Bernie in large part because of it.

[stone space]

4. NumbersUSA is White Supremacist Hate Group.

It's part of the John Tanton Network.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/john-tanton

https://www.splcenter.org/20090201/nativist-lobby-three-faces-intolerance

As for Steve King, he's my congressman these days.

These are not exactly stellar endorsements.