Bill Clinton: Path to Citizenship Is Just Common Sense

Politico

By Annie Karni

May 12, 2015

Bill Clinton: Path to citizenship is just common sense

Former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday promoted his wife’s robust call for immigration reform during a paid appearance at the Univision upfront presentation.

“If I were advising candidates, I would say you’ve got to have a credible position on immigration reform,” Clinton said in a brief Q-and-A session with Fusion anchor Alicia Menendez. “I think the only thing that makes sense is a path to citizenship and adequate support for children in a much more discriminating way than enforcing the law.”

His comment came one week after Hillary Clinton, speaking at a campaign stop in Las Vegas, vowed to expand on President Obama’s executive actions to allow millions of more undocumented immigrants obtain legal protection and work permits.

Hillary Clinton also challenged the entire Republican field for failing to support a path to citizenship. “When they talk about legal status,” she  said, “that is code for second-class status.”

Bill Clinton has said he plans to continue giving paid speeches while his wife runs for president. The appearance before Univision, however, was the product of a long relationship between the Clintons and the Spanish language network. Haim Saban, who with a group of investors acquired Univision in 2007, is a Hillary Clinton megadonor, and threw her a fundraiser last week.

Univision and the Clinton Foundation are also partners on an education program, “Too Small To Fail,” and the network praised Hillary Clinton’s stance last week on immigration.

Bill Clinton, fresh off a Foundation trip to Africa, spoke for about 15 minutes about how cooperation must triumph conflict as the country’s population becomes more diverse.

“The only thing that makes sense is to have a policy of radical inclusion,” he said. “If you look at the world today, everywhere people are practicing inclusive governance … good things are happening. Everywhere people are practicing divisive politics, unequal economic opportunities, and unequal exclusive governance arrangements good things are not happening. This is not rocket science.”

Speaking briefly about the criminal justice system, he evoked the death of Eric Garner last July, but appeared not to remember his name.

“Remember when the fellow was dying in New York, who was selling the illegal cigarettes in the street and he had a bunch of kids and he was very much overweight and was put in a chokehold and his cardio-vascular system failed,” Clinton said.

He contrasted the tragedy of his death and the protests it sparked with the death of Ezell Ford, a civilian, by police hands in Los Angeles days later, where there were no protests because a system of “community decision makers” was instituted to review every police incident.

“There weren’t riots,” Clinton said. “People felt like they were part of a process that treated them like they mattered. That their children’s lives were not insignificant…that’s the big test of the entire world.”

His message to the growing population of millennial Hispanics: “be upbeat and relentlessly forward looking,” he said. “Every country, every company, every person needs to be in the future business. You may think that’s funny for a guy that’s older than everybody in this audience, but you have to live in the future.”

Clinton was the first former President to participate in the media company’s upfront presentation.

“I’m well aware I’m just a warm up act for Ricky Martin,” said Clinton. “At my age, you just take these changes when you get them.”

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