Bernie Sanders would end deportations of undocumented immigrants who've lived in the U.S. for five years
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said today he would not deport undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States at least five years.
“We have 11 million people today who are living in fear,” he said in a speech to a conference of immigration activists in Las Vegas. “We need to fight as hard as we can to end that fear.”
Sanders said he wanted to pass the “strongest comprehensive immigration reform possible” in the first 100 days of his administration. But if Congress doesn’t act, he said he would expand President Barack Obama’s executive actions to defer deportations.
Essentially, Sanders wants to redo the failed 2013 Senate immigration reform bill, which was not voted on by the House of Representatives, as an executive action. He said he would use executive action to “provide broad administrative relief to the parents of citizens, the parents of legal permanent residents, the parents of DREAMers, other family members and the rest of the immigrant population that would have been legalized if the House of Representatives did their job.”