2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow the Latest Smear Campaign Against Bernie Sanders Collapsed Before It Started
How the Latest Smear Campaign Against Bernie Sanders Collapsed Before It Started
The Vermont senators words were completely twisted. Heres what he actually said.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet
July 31, 2015
This week, Bernie Sanders sat down with Vox.com for a lengthy interview on a variety of topics. One of the topics covered was the Vermont independent senator's views on immigration. Sanders' response to a question from Vox's Ezra Klein about whether the United States should have completely open borders has caused quite a bit of controversy. Here's the section in question:
KLEIN: You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ....
SANDERS: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.
KLEIN: Really?
SANDERS: Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...
KLEIN: But it would make ....
SANDERS: Excuse me ....
KLEIN: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?
SANDERS: It would make everybody in America poorer you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.
The first blogger to pick up on this section and use it to bash Sanders was Vox's on Dylan Matthews, a young writer with a history of engaging in poorly researched conjecture. He wrote a post attacking Sanders, tweeting it out under the curious line that the senator doesn't actually care about inequality even though Sanders has spent much of his life fighting inequality in every dimension.
But the actual post is even stranger.
Matthews calls Sanders' view ugly because it treats American lives as more valuable than the lives of foreigners, and says he's wrong about what the effects of an open-border policy would be on American workers. Matthews cites a Libertarian website that claims the world GDP would increase between 50 to 150 percent and then a bunch of other random statistics to try to make the case that completely unlimited immigration would be positive for the United States.
At one point, he even throws in the example of Russian migration to Israel giving Israelis as a whole a higher standard of living. (He ignores that the influx caused such large social problems in Israel that the country sought billions in loans to assist it and caused a housing crisis that exacerbated the growth of settlements in Palestinian territory.)
The underyling point made by Klein and Matthews is also very strange: that the solution to global inequalities is for the United States and other rich countries to simply eliminate their borders and let everyone in. This ignores the problems that actually create global economic inequality: dysfunctional governing systems, exploitative supply chains and poor distribution of capital.
People don't come to the United States because as soon as they land on its shores, they are granted riches. Historically, they come here for access to jobs. When the jobs don't exist, they don't come here. During the Great Recession, both documented and undocumented immigration fell sharply. One of the practical results of the North American Free Trade Agreement was the collapse of the Mexican agricultural industry, which was flooded with highly subsidized agribusiness from the United States. What actually happened was that migration to the United States from Mexico dramatically increased, as workers tried to find new jobs to the north.
By Matthews' logic, it was good that NAFTA wiped out a section of the Mexican middle class, so they could risk their lives crossing a desert to come to the United States to be exploited for substandard-wage jobs rather than achieve the middle-class lifestyles they had in their own communities.
A number of other outlets joined in the pile-on after Matthews' missive, including ThinkProgress. But what was most interesting was the confirmation of Sanders' thesis that the idea of open borders is an ultra-right-wing Koch brothers idea. After he made his remarks, a number of right-libertarians wrote pieces slamming Sanders, including Daniel Bier of the so-called Foundation for Economic Education.
What's being lost in all of the sniping at Sanders is his actual record on immigration. Sanders is a son of a Polish Jewish migrant, and has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and ending detention quotas for undocumented immigrants. He vocally supported President Obama's immigration executive order and has called for going even further, such as including the parents of dreamers, putting him to the left of President Obama. Sanders voted in favor of 2013's comprehensive immigration reform bill, the primary piece of legislation immigrant advocates support. In 2003, he had a zero percent rating from the main anti-immigrant advocacy group, FAIR.
Despite all of this, it appears Sanders is being slammed for admitting a core truth about immigration in America: today, the corporate elite are advocates for more immigration not because they care about the hard-working families who risk everything to come here but because they absolutely do want workers to exploit for lower wages. The challenge for progressives is to be able to conduct a fair and humane immigration policy that defends human rights while not simply doing the bidding of Corporate America.
"I dont think theres any presidential candidate, none, who thinks we should open up the borders, explained Sanders at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce later this week.
That's a level of nuance that may be lost on bloggers who were quick to criticize Sanders, but it's one that working people in America and abroad understand. For Vox, however, nuance may not be the most profitable. Moiz Syed, who works at Wikimedia, pointed out on Twitter that Matthews' hit piece on Sanders popped up alongside a sponsorship from Walmart.
Zaid Jilani is an AlterNet staff writer. Follow @zaidjilani on Twitter.

stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Would you do us all the decency of writing your diatribes in English and not Emojis?
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)
Scuba
(53,475 posts)KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)bvar22
(39,909 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
As far as Fox News goes, he's one of few voices of sanity there.
Know who else has been on Fox News?
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)He has appeared on. He's on our side (the Democrats). He's a longtime DU member, and has always disclosed his affiliations.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Number23
(24,544 posts)




NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Worthy of no more thought than I have already given. Once again, first time I have seen you say anything negative about Sanders. I was taken back a little.
Maybe it would help if you posted a link of Steven supporting conservative views on a fox.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)appalachiablue
(43,412 posts)changed months ago. This gotcha set up by he & Matthews = sleaze.
marble falls
(63,261 posts)InAbLuEsTaTe
(24,791 posts)JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)Let me guess, just like his missing in action climate change plan (seriously, he has no actual proposal as of yet), he has no immigration policy plan either? Nor does he have jobs plan. He speaks a lot of truth but doesn't seem to have any solutions.
artislife
(9,497 posts)senz
(11,945 posts)senz
(11,945 posts)on Bernie's immigration policy --
"Sanders is a son of a Polish Jewish migrant, and has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and ending detention quotas for undocumented immigrants. He vocally supported President Obama's immigration executive order and has called for going even further, such as including the parents of dreamers, putting him to the left of President Obama. Sanders voted in favor of 2013's comprehensive immigration reform bill, the primary piece of legislation immigrant advocates support. In 2003, he had a zero percent rating from the main anti-immigrant advocacy group, FAIR."
marble falls
(63,261 posts)You obviously have refrained from even the most elementary of investigations, like looking up Bernies actions in Congress or in the rest of his life.
I've looked up Hillary Clinton's record - pro TPP, pro Keystone, pro frack, pro mandatory sentencing, pro three strikes, pro private corrections, pro continuing the Afghan failure, pro Patriot Act, pro homeland security ....
Tell me honestly - she supports these issues and you agree with them?
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)that she's caused.
marble falls
(63,261 posts)Funny how people on both sides who claim to dislike political dynasties are anticipating eagerly a Clinton/Bush contest.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)marble falls
(63,261 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Divernan
(15,480 posts)TM99
(8,352 posts)you might get a smear right eventually.
Ron Paul is a libertarian. They are anti-statists. They support fully open borders because they are anarcho-capitalists and want less government not more. Paul is exactly the type of right wing libertarian that Sanders is criticizing.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)We are waiting with bated breath for yr words of wisdom on this equivocation.
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)of course. or a least i've heard that here more than once (which is shocking in its utter absurdity, let alone frequency) and there you have it! all you fringe types need to let the hard-headed/hearted pragmatists run shit! just in case.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)The MSM is trying to push the idea of open borders for unlimited access to slave labor, as 30% of our labor force is forced to sit out and Climate Change is at our door??
This place is going to be Easter Island all over again if we don't stop them.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)Response to marble falls (Original post)
Corruption Inc This message was self-deleted by its author.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)And I wonder how much fudging had to go on to get to 46th.
I had imagined around 1,009th!
Maybe too much weight was given to stories about the Kardashians that later on turned out to be true!
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Put aside the whole the "open borders" question, which is a distraction. Does he favor raising LEGAL immigration limits?
I'm having a hard time finding out through all the noise.