Clinton Irks Immigrants' Advocates
BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
January 28, 2008
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/70253


Immigrant-rights advocates and some Latino leaders are voicing concern at Senator Clinton's campaign-trail rhetoric about swiftly deporting immigrants with a criminal past.
A vow to give the boot to criminal aliens has become an almost daily part of the New York senator's presidential campaign spiel on overhauling the immigration system.

"Anybody who committed a crime in this country or in the country they came from has to be deported immediately, with no legal process. They are immediately gone," Mrs. Clinton told a town hall meeting in Anderson, S.C., Thursday. On Wednesday, she told a crowd in North Bergen, N.J., that such criminals "absolutely" need to be deported. A day earlier, she told a rally in Salinas, Calif., that aliens with criminal records "should be deported, no questions asked."

Mrs. Clinton does not raise the subject in every speech, but her tough talk on the issue dates back at least to the Iowa caucuses last month, where she told the mother of a woman killed by a foreigner in a car accident that illegal aliens who have committed crimes need to be sent home "immediately."

"No legal process," the New York senator said at a forum in Tipton, Iowa, according to a political news outlet, the Politico. "You put them on a plane to wherever they came from."

Mrs. Clinton's emphasis on the haste with which criminals would be removed may make voters more tolerant of her support for legalizing most illegal aliens, but for activists who aid people with immigration problems, her refrain about the lack of recourse is hard to stomach.
"It's disturbing that she would make a statement like that, that we should deport everybody without due process of law," a vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, David Leopold, said. "That's a very disturbing statement. This country is all about due process of law."

"It is worrisome," an official with the National Council of La Raza, Cecilia Muñoz, said. "The semantics and nuances make or break families. As you can imagine, the sensitivity on these issues in the Latino community is very high."

In the public remarks reviewed by The New York Sun, Mrs. Clinton seemed to propose mandatory deportation for any crime. In several instances, she did not say explicitly whether she was referring to all foreigners in America or only to illegal aliens seeking to be legalized. However, she made the comments while outlining her position on the immigration overhaul which failed in Congress last year.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign said she was referring to language in that bill, sponsored by Senators Kennedy of Massachusetts and McCain of Arizona, which barred granting the new "Z" visa and eventually citizenship to anyone convicted of a felony, certain serious misdemeanors, or three of any type of misdemeanor. "The bill makes clear that once someone is ultimately determined to have committed a disqualifying crime, they are deportable," a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Blake Zeff, said. "At that point, there is no process though which they can petition to obtain legal status to stay in the country. And there are no exceptions — not even an extreme hardship exception."

The bill's language permitted legalization for some who committed crimes relating to illegal entry into America and forging Social Security cards. Some Republicans tried to add those crimes to the list which could make one ineligible to stay, but supporters of the bill objected, saying such a bar would effectively scuttle the bill since most illegal migrants have violated those laws.

Mrs. Clinton's leading rival for the nomination, Senator Obama of Illinois, does not appear to address the criminal alien issue regularly on the stump. However, he supported the immigration bill and cast the same votes as the former first lady on the crime-related amendments.

The other major Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, backs the bill, but was not in the Senate last year. Among the Republican hopefuls, Mr. McCain was the only backer of the immigration measure.

Mr. Leopold said he was troubled by Mrs. Clinton's language even if she was just repeating what was in the bill. "When I hear her make the statement, Everybody should be put on planes, no questions asked, whether in the context of the 'Z' visa or in the context of general immigration policy, it is very disturbing," he said, calling the words "red meat for the enforcement-minded."

One subtext to the concern is that immigrant-rights advocates are still angry with President Clinton over legislation he signed in 1996 that effectively stripped judges of the power to block the deportation of foreigners convicted of an "aggravated felony." The term was broadly defined and has led to automatic deportations even for what some might consider minor offenses.

"How about two public urinations? How about driving a car recklessly and your sister dies in the passenger seat and you get deported for that?" a law professor at the University of California at Davis, Bill Hing, said.

He called Mrs. Clinton's rhetoric overly simplistic. "She needs to make it a lot more clear rather than making these sweeping statements. It is dangerous to write off people without considering their individual backgrounds," the professor said.

While Mrs. Clinton's campaign stressed that she was referring to illegal aliens who commit crimes, it did not reply to a query about whether she favors automatic deportation of legal immigrants who run afoul of the law. In 2001, Mr. Kennedy introduced a bill to overturn part of the 1996 legislation, signed by Mr. Clinton, which made deportation automatic in many cases. The measure never got out of committee, but it had ten Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate. Mrs. Clinton was not among them.

"Mrs. Clinton keeps reminding us about going back to the 90s and talking about how great the 90s were," Mr. Leopold said. "If she's planning to bring back that approach to immigration, that's disturbing as well."

Ms. Munoz called the 1996 law "very ugly," and added, "I dare you to try to find a candidate willing to get into these nuances and talk about due process of law."

The New York senator's showcasing of the criminal alien issue dovetails with the tough stance her husband took on crime in his 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Last month, she broke ranks with her Democratic rivals by opposing plans to shorten the sentences of some convicted of dealing or possessing crack cocaine.