In 2006, while running for the U.S. Senate, Amy Klobuchar held the same positions on illegal immigration as President Donald Trump — supporting a physical barrier at the U.S.-Mexico border and mandatory E-Verify to ban employers from hiring illegal aliens.
Unearthed footage of a 2006 U.S. Senate candidate debate at the University of St. Thomas reveals Klobuchar once held similar views on illegal immigration as Trump, policies she now avidly opposes as she runs for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination.
“I do believe that we need more resources at the border and that includes a fence,” Klobuchar said. “What we have now, we have people waiting to come in legally. Thousands of people waiting to come in legally to this country, and we have people coming in illegally. That’s not right. We need to get order at the border.”
Klobuchar went even further, touting her support for nationwide mandatory E-Verify to open jobs for Americans and prohibit businesses from hiring illegal aliens:
But we also have to stop giving amnesty to companies that are hiring illegal immigrants. Under this administration, the number of prosecutions of companies [hiring illegal immigrants] has gone way down. That has to change. [Emphasis added]
Today, Klobuchar has dropped all support for physical barriers along the southern border to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking, vowing on her campaign website to rescind all border wall funding that Trump has secured in recent months and end the national emergency declaration at the border.
“Stop the diversion of funds needed to modernize our military bases from being used for the border wall,” Klobuchar touts, continuing that she “will rescind President Trump’s national emergency declaration and return funding for its intended purpose.”
On mandatory E-Verify, Klobuchar has said explicitly that she will not support such a policy unless it is coupled with an amnesty for the majority of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the U.S.
Fellow 2020 Democrat Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has had a similar left-turn on immigration as Klobuchar. As recent as 2015, Sanders called the idea of open borders a “Koch brothers proposal” to drive down wages for America’s working and middle class.
Most recently, when challenged on his immigration shift by a swing voter concerned about the wage impact on Americans of mass illegal and legal immigration, Sanders dismissed the issue and said cheap foreign workers are necessary to keep the price of food down — an argument repeatedly made by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and corporate interests.
“If [Trump] threw everybody out of the country, the price of food in this country would skyrocket,” Sanders said. “Who do you think is picking the crops and planting all over this country?”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.