Real Time with Bill Maher is not typically a show where one expects to hear honest facts on an issue like immigration. However, during an episode of the HBO program last Friday, Maher brought up Hillary Clinton’s record while several of his pro-amnesty guests gushed over the presidential candidate’s lenient immigration policies.
After several minutes discussing the history of Republican opinions on immigration, the host chimed in, “Did you see the Democratic debate on Univision about a week ago?” he asked. “Because there has been a real change with the Democrats, too. Mission creep, I would call it. I understand their position was comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. “Now, in front of Univision, it seems to have morphed into, ‘you get across that river, you’re here to stay.”
But amnesty advocate Sister Simone Campbell objected: “I don’t think that’s really what was said.” Maher responded by quoting a past statement by Clinton on the matter, “Well, it certainly wasn’t what Hillary said two years ago, which was ‘we have to send a clear message. Just because your child gets across the border that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,’” he quoted. Maher finished by pointing out, “She’s changed her tune a lot from that.”
There’s no doubt that Clinton has shifted her stance away from enforcing existing immigration laws toward what’s essentially an open border policy. On January 6, 2016, she went so far as to say “I’ll defend President Obama’s executive action [on immigration]—and I’ll go even further to keep families together.” She continued by promising to “end family detention, close private [illegal]immigrant detention centers and help more eligible people become naturalized.”
Compare this to her stance as a New York Senator in 2003, when Clinton told a talk show host “I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.” She continued by calling for a solution to the problem, saying, “We’ve got to do more at our borders, and people have to stop employing the illegal immigrants.”
As illegal immigration continues to cost law-abiding citizens their lives, Hillary Clinton is allowing the pressure of a vicious election cycle to drag her further left on the issue instead of returning to a policy stance that promotes the protection of American lives and the enforcement of our laws.
Read FAIR’s analysis of Hillary Clinton’s official immigration platform at FAIRus.org.