Democratic Presidential Candidates’ Stance on Immigration

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Lincoln Chafee, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb and Lawrence Lessig, are the six Democratic Presdiential candidates. Read on to know where these candidates stand on immigration reform and other issues.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, 67, spouse of Bill Clinton was the First Lady of the U.S. between 1993 and 2001. She served as the 67th Secretary of State under President Obama from 2009 to 2013.

Clinton:

  • is a strong advocate of comprehensive immigration reform. She supports the idea of putting the undocumented immigrants on a path to U.S. citizenship.
  • is against mass incarceration. She wants to keep the communities safe and reduce the prison population.
  • recently supported a group that was fighting for a higher minimum wage. She has voiced support for a proposal that would increase the minimum wage to $12 per hour.
  • who believes community college must be free,  recently unveiled a $350-billion plan that would make college education more affordable, during a town hall meeting at New Hampshire.
  •  on student loan reform. She is also against for-profit colleges.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders, 74, has held different positions and has served as the Mayor of Burlington, Vermont; as a U.S. Congressman from Vermont and as a U.S. Senator from Vermont. Sanders:

  • supports immigration reform. He would pass comprehensive immigration reform and the DREAM Act if elected as president. He would also expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to include the undocumented parents of DREAMers, green card holders and U.S. citizens.
  • wants to expand Medicare to cover all in the U.S.
  • is in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
  • would put an end to gender-based wage discrimination and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Lincoln Chafee

Lincoln Chafee, 62, served as a Republican Mayor of Warwick, as a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island and as the Governor of Rhode Island. He is now running for president of the U.S.

Chafee:

  • supports path to legalization for undocumented immigrants and guest worker programs.
  • wants to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10.
  • is in favor of the Affordable Care Act .
  • like his counterparts, wants to increase transparency in wages by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Martin O’Malley

Martin O’Malley, 52, has served as the Mayor of Baltimore and as the Governor of Maryland.

O’Malley:

  • supports raising minimum wage to $15 per hour. He raised Maryland’s minimum wage to $10.10 per hour when he was the Governor of the state.
  • would expand the deferred action program. He says he would use all legal and executive authorities to welcome people around the world who are still dreaming of becoming U.S. citizens.
  • is in favor of same-sex marriages and in 2012, he signed a bill legalizing such marriages in Maryland.
  • also expressed his support for equal pay for men and women. He aims at closing the gender pay gap.

Jim Webb

Jim Webb, 69, is a Marine Corps vet. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and as a U.S. Senator from Vermont.

Webb:

  • wants to secure America’s borders and allow eligible undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status in the U.S.
  • favors the Affordable Care Act. He also criticized the way in which President Obama dealt with it.
  • opposed same-sex marriages in the past but has expressed his support for the same when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages.
  • supports equal pay.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, 54, is the co-founder of Creative Commons, Rootstrikers and Mayday. He is currently serving as the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and as a law professor at Harvard.

Lessig:

  • is against planned parenthood and he says he would pass a law defunding Planned Parenthood, if elected as president.
  • would pass voting reform and make election-day a federal holiday.
  • wants to pass the Citizen Equality Act and fix democracy.
  • wants to pass an immigration policy that would promise the hardest workers that they can become U.S. citizens.

Lessig says that he would resign and hand over the presidency to the vice president after the U.S. Congress passes the Citizen Equality Act, if he wins the 2016 presidential election.