Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed the immigration 'crisis that Donald Trump has created and hopes to profit from politically.'
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) repudiated the anti-immigrant policies and stances of the Republican Party during the Democratic debate on Thursday night.
"In this country, immigration does not make us weaker, immigration makes us stronger," said Warren. "I want to see us expand legal immigration and create a pathway to citizenship for our DREAMers but also for their grandparents. For their cousins, for people who have overstayed student visas and for people who came here to work in the fields."
She criticized the failings of the current immigration system under Trump and said she wants to create a "system that is a path to citizenship that is fair and achievable."
"Down at the border," she said, "we've got to work this entirely. A system right now that cannot tell the difference in the threat posed by a terrorist, a criminal, and a 12-year-old girl is not a system that is keeping us safer and it is not serving our values."
The current crisis at the border, she continued, is "in no small part because we have withdrawn help for people in Central America who are suffering. We need to restore that help, we need to help establish and re-establish the rule of law so people don't feel like they have to flee for their lives."
Trump, she said, has created this crisis and hopes to profit from it politically.
"We have to have the courage to stand up and fight back," she added.
Trump ran on an anti-immigrant message in 2016 and his fellow Republicans echoed the same message during their failed 2018 midterm campaigns.
His administration has recently announced efforts to reduce legal immigration, in addition to the family separation policy and other harsh anti-immigrant measures he has embraced.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
