Hillary Clinton Pledges to ‘Fight for Comprehensive Immigration Reform’, Expand Executive Amnesty

At a campaign stop in Nevada yesterday, 2016 Presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, pledged to fight for ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ with an amnesty for most illegal aliens living in the United States and to go further than President Obama in using executive authority to grant amnesty to individuals in the country illegally. Changing the immigration system would be a top priority should she become president, Clinton said. “We can’t wait any longer. We can’t wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship.”

“I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship for you and for your families across our country,” she said. “I will fight to stop partisan attacks on the executive actions that would put Dreamers, including those with us today, at risk of deportation. And if Congress continues to refuse to act, as president I would do everything possible under the law to go even further. There are more people, like many parents of Dreamers, and others, with deep ties and contributions to our communities, who deserve a chance to stay, and I will fight for them.”

Clinton continued, defending the president’s executive amnesties and vowing to expand them if she were to become president.

“I want to do everything we can to defend the president’s executive orders because I think they were certainly within his authority, constitutionally, legally, they were based on precedent that I certainly believe is adequate. And then still try to go further and deal with some of these other issues, like the re-unification of families that were here and that have been split up.”

As Byron York pointed out, a number of words were missing from Clinton’s discussion of immigration. She did not say “border,” for example, or “visa” or “E-Verify” or “workplace.” The notion of enforcing the nation’s immigration laws as they currently exist was not on the table.

Watch the Clinton town hall here