Last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton sat down with a group of students in Las Vegas on and endorsed President Obama’s controversial executive actions on immigration. She signaled that she would go beyond that to “fight for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship.” She also criticized the proposals made by Republican candidates for legal status versus full citizenship as a stalking horse for granting them “second-class status.”
While several media headlines characterized Clinton’s statements as being “stunningly aggressive” [Vox], in line with immigration activists [The National Journal] and a “pivot to the left” [Politico], in reality Clinton’s views are fairly mainstream. Public opinion trends over the past two decades suggest a real readiness for immigration reform. Read more in the full article in the Monkey Cage blog from the Washington Post by Dina Smeltz (@roguepollster), senior fellow on public opinion and foreign policy at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Sara McElmurry (@s_mcelmurry), the council’s assistant director for immigration.