Clinton Criticizes Bush on Immigration Stance

New York Times

By Amy Chozick

July 7, 2015

Clinton Criticizes Bush on Immigration Stance

Hillary Rodham Clinton used the first major news interview of her presidential campaign to directly attack the Republican candidate Jeb Bush for supporting an immigration policy that would not provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million to 12 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

“He doesn’t believe in a path to citizenship,” Mrs. Clinton told CNN after a campaign event here Tuesday. “If he did at one time, he no longer does.”

She also criticized the rest of the Republican 2016 field for not rejecting more stridently recent comments by Donald J. Trump calling illegal Mexican immigrants “rapists” and criminals. The comments prompted many businesses to end partnerships with Mr. Trump.

“I feel very bad and very disappointed with him and with the Republican Party,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding of the rest of the Republican candidates, “But they are all in the, you know, in the same general area on immigration.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comments to CNN emphasize how important the issue of immigration and winning over Latino votes will be in the 2016 election. She has already said she would seek to go further than President Obama in expanding a path to citizenship to students here illegally and their families.

On Saturday, Mr. Bush, whose wife is Mexican, said he took offense to Mr. Trump’s comments. “To make these extraordinarily ugly kind of comments is not reflective of the Republican Party,” he said.

A spokeswoman, Emily Benavides, said Mr. Bush believed in “legal status for those currently in the country after they pay fines and taxes, learn English and commit no substantial crimes.”

Jorge Guerra, a 26-year-old of Guatemalan decent, waited outside a public library here to see Mrs. Clinton at her town-hall-style event. He said he wanted to hear what she had to say about Latin America and immigration. But he said he also wanted to hear from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a socialist independent who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, before deciding whom to support.

Mr. Guerra said that part of what was holding him back from being all-in for Mrs. Clinton was her relationship to Wall Street and corporations. “It unnerves me,” he said. “I want her to be as honest about and be as open as possible about a lot of these questions.”

Mrs. Clinton tried to answer some of them by sitting down with CNN. The questions ranged from her use of a personal email address while at the State Department to recent polls that show a growing number of voters do not trust her. “That has been a theme that has been used against me and my husband for many, many years,” Mrs. Clinton said. “At the end of the day, I think voters sort it all out.”

Before the interview, Mrs. Clinton reassured the crowd of roughly 350 people who packed into the library that she could be trusted to look out for average Americans. “I want people’s lives to be better when I finish as your president than when I started,” she said.

The event was the start of a second phase in Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign in which she intends to speak to larger crowds and take more questions from voters in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

This liberal college town, which is home to the University of Iowa and overwhelmingly favored Mr. Obama and John Edwards in 2008 (she came in third statewide), could serve as a test of whether Mrs. Clinton’s message resonates with the Democratic Party’s base. Mr. Sanders drew a crowd of 300 people at an event here in May. (Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said an additional 250 people had waited outside her event at the library.)

In her remarks, an animated Mrs. Clinton seemed to try to hit all the liberal notes, including combating climate change, giving women access to reproductive health care, and celebrating the Supreme Court’s recent decisions affirming the right to same-sex marriage nationwide and upholding a crucial provision of Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul.

“If a Republican is elected president, that will be the end of the Affordable Care Act,” Mrs. Clinton said.

After Iowa City, she headed to Ottumwa to talk to supporters at a house party. The campaign said it had directly reached 16,000 Iowans so far and recruited at least one committed caucusgoer in each of the state’s 1,682 precincts.

But Mrs. Clinton still has much to do in this state, where voters expect to personally meet their candidates before participating in the caucuses, which will take place Feb. 1. Her advantage over Mr. Sanders narrowed in a recent Quinnipiac University poll — she still led by double digits — and Iowans are clearly checking their options.

“I think I’m here out of curiosity more than anything else,” said Ashley Heffernen, 22, a recent college graduate who waited in line with her boyfriend to hear Mrs. Clinton in Iowa City and hoping to ask a question about immigration.

Mrs. Clinton seemed acutely aware of how tough things may be for her in Iowa. After her remarks, she took questions from the audience. Dozens of hands went up.

“I’m going to let you pick,” she told the crowd. “Because I don’t want to lose any potential caucusgoers.”

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