The OP's title is about the Immigration Bill and Senator Sanders support of those who literally slave in the fields. It is a national disgrace and high on my list of priorities.
The reason the United Farm Workers could not in good faith endorse Senator Sanders is because he would not support it and because he himself is guilty of exploiting migrant workers in Vermont. Do you know who the United farm Workers are? They are field laborers just like the Immokalee. They, more than anyone else, truly understand what they are up against. Did you know they desparately wanted that bill signed because it was a step towards freedom? They begged him. Even with the best of intentions, Senator Sanders doesn't always get it right. Those workers have to live with the results of his decision every single day of their lives. And, they have consistently told him he got it wrong.
To make matters worse, when the dairy industry of Vermont needed inexpensive labor, he actually introduced a bill with the exact same provisions and lack of protection for workers as the bill he had previously opposed. That's right, so the very same migrant workers could be shipped into Vermont for cheap labor.
This is not about gotcha. Senator Sanders is a very good man. That said, he put aside his human rights values when it was economically advantageous to Vermont. And, he has done so on more than one occasion. When he had compassion for the Immokalee workers in Florida, he was doing the right thing. When he refused to listen to the on the ground, lived concerns of exploited workers across this country, he did not. When he directly exploited migrant workers in Vermont for financial gain to the dairy industry there, he did not. Unless you think some migrant workers are more equal than others, the fact that he did that should bother you. It bothered the United Farm Workers enough that they protested his actions on both accounts.
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