I don’t know - I read the Sanders quote above, and I think this is a reasonable extrapolation. What he’s basically saying is that every immigrant coming in takes a job away from American youth and pushes wages lower, and he prioritizes those American jobs over letting foreigners come in to relieve their own poverty. If his position is really that some immigration - particularly some unskilled immigration - is okay, he’s going to have to actually explain how he squares that with his above beliefs. Do you have any cites that he does so? Or that he even has a different position?
The thing is if this was Hillary Clinton or any other politician, we’d be talking about a dishonest flip flop. That’s exactly what Sanders has done here - changed his position because he knew he couldn’t get votes with the old one.
That’s not at all how I read his statement. There’s a real excluded middle here: people seem to be saying that you’re either in favor of completely open borders, as Klein is pushing him to say, or else you’re some sort of xenophobic nativist.
Sanders’s position seems to be somewhere in the middle. I cited his detailed position, and you’re welcome to read it. Certainly that seems to be a better indication of his actual position than his off-the-cuff answer to a push interview question.
Exactly, except that it’s not a changed position, rather it’s a refusal to adopt a position he never took (that is, Sanders never, that I’m aware of, advocated for completely open borders), and also except that I think it’s insane to criticize politicians for “dishonest flip-flops”, since it’s a fantastic thing when a politician changes from a bad position to a good one, and we should make that easier for politicians to do, not harder. But other than those two things you’re totally right :).
I agree that “open borders” is not the opposite of “xenophobic nativist.”
Where I don’t necessarily agree is whether a politician’s response to a “push interview question” can be looked at as their actual policy. I think it can share the weight with a prepared position paper.
Fair enough. But reread Klein’s question. It was a lousy question, IMO: it basically said, “If you believe the things you claim to believe, then it must lead to other beliefs you’ve never claimed to have.” Sanders then denies having those beliefs Klein said he must have, and explained why. It’s not at all a contradiction of other positions he’s held, but it may look like it since most of the time Sanders is arguing for so much openness in immigration policy, and when Klein pushes him to the extreme position, for the first time he argues against a level of openness in immigration policy.
I think Sanders’ position isn’t in the excluded middle so much as it’s in the excluded muddle. Sanders has shown an inability to take sides when there are two legitimate leftish instincts in conflict. Paul Krugman has stated it succintly: you can either have a liberal immigration policy or you can have a generous welfare state. You cannot have both. And that’s not even getting into the conflict between the needs of low skill American workers and what mass immigration does to their economic prospects.
Since the Klein interview, sanders chose the path of less resistance: just favor a liberal immigration policy.
I assume you’re referring to this, which I admit I missed earlier. I skimmed through that. Did I miss the part where he talked about his thoughts on the current level of immigration to the US? Is it too high? Is it too low? Perfect as-is? Does Sanders even have an opinion?
I don’t think he phrases it in terms of whether the absolute number is too high or too low, but every specific proposal of his I’ve seen increases opportunities for legal immigration; the effect of his proposals would almost certainly be to raise immigration numbers.
Sanders seems to want to make the process more humane as a whole and reduce deportations of those already in the US, both of which are great. But he’s not really saying anything about people who are outside the US and want to come here (other than refugees.) The fact that he seems to think that low-wage immigrants take jobs from Americans and drive down wages is telling. I’m still not convinced that the reasonable extrapolation from that is that he would largely close the doors to low-skill immigrants not presently in the US (or “unjustly deported”) is mis-stating his position.
Then find something–anything–showing that in, say, the past five years he’s unambiguously supported reducing the numbers of low-skill immigrants. An interview in which he refused to adopt the extreme position of absolutely open borders obviously doesn’t suffice.
If you can’t find any evidence of him taking that position, despite his many statements on immigration, then yeah, it IS an unreasonable extrapolation.
No. I fully admit that the evidence here is ambiguous. From that, you seem to be drawing a firm conclusion (of course he favors open immigration!), whereas I am simply observing that another possibility can be reasonably inferred from statements he’s made. If you want to persist in believing that unless he’s made solid statements opposing low-skill immigration, then he must clearly be in favor, you may do so, but don’t expect others to adopt your ‘logic.’
I’m not a big fan of Clinton (but I will be voting for her over Trump) and from the sidelines it seems that right now Sanders and his supporters are bitter and acting like sore losers: if their Sanders can’t win they’ll take their ball and go home.
I’m hoping that after the DNC and some of the bitterness has subsided that they’ll come around to the idea that HRC is a much better president than Trump and vote for her. It will help if Sanders throws in his support.
That’s a Milton Friedman quote, I believe. I don’t recall PRK saying that.
ETA: And of course, lots of Western countries have had moderately liberal immigration rules and moderately generous welfare states. Friedman (or whoever) was glibly excluding vast tracts of middle ground.
Refusing to vote for someone you don’t want to be President isn’t being a sore loser, it’s why voting exists. Supporting Sanders doesn’t make one obliged to support Clinton any more than supporting Bush makes one obliged to support Trump.