On Friday’s “CBS Mornings,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that he would support President Joe Biden taking executive action to enact stronger border policies.
Sanders said, “We have a disaster at the border, there was an effort to pass something, there’s a lot of politics that’s going on. Republicans want to be more extreme than Democrats do. Bottom line is, you can’t have tens and tens of thousands of people illegally trying to come into our country every single week. But what you can do is develop a long-term immigration policy, which, among other things, says that kids who were born in this country become citizens, that we have a sane and rational policy in terms of immigration, which we don’t have right now. It is going to require bipartisan cooperation.”
Co-host Gayle King then asked, “Biden says he’s thinking about using an executive order to strengthen the border policies. Would you support that?”
Sanders responded, “Yeah, I would.”
King followed up, “You would support that?” Sanders once again answered in the affirmative.
Co-host Tony Dokoupil then asked, “What do you do with the people already here? Donald Trump says he wants to deport them all. He just said that yesterday.”
Sanders responded, “You may recall, just a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, Trump said something which was very frightening…the poisoning of our blood. … Look, my father came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. We are primarily a nation of immigrants. And we’re going to have to figure out a humane solution to what is, in fact, a very difficult problem. And we should also recognize that while we try to develop a sane immigration policy, you know why people are fleeing? They’re fleeing Latin America and elsewhere because climate change makes it impossible for them to grow their crops, because of drug violence in their communities where kids are being killed. So, it’s a complicated issue. We need a humane response to it.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
