2008 Politico pre-Potomac Primary interviews: on Immigration

Hillary Clinton: Guest workers only for farms, to address labor shortage

A: Well, for a couple of reasons. For one, there is a shortage of farm workers. This is a sector of the economy that over decades has been demonstrated to be very difficult to attract legal workers. That is not true yet in the hotel industry and the hospitality industry. So I would like to solve what is clearly a shortage-of-labor problem in the agricultural sector. I’d like to see it be a part of comprehensive immigration reform. In the absence of that, what’s happening is that farmers in California are starting to move their production facilities to Mexico and Latin American. It’s going to be a lose-lose for us if we don’t get that agricultural problem fixed.

Hillary Clinton: Don’t turn local police into immigration enforcers

A: I think it’s really sad that individual communities are trying to cope with our broken immigration system. It should not be the responsibility of a municipality or county. This has to be fixed at the federal level. There are lots of strong arguments against turning local police officers into immigration enforcement officials. It has to do with making sure people will report crimes, making sure people will go to the police when there’s a problem. That’s a matter of public safety. It doesn’t always only affect the immigrant community, it affects all of us. So I far prefer that we try to do what needs to be done on comprehensive immigration reform and I have spoken, you know, very forthrightly about what I would do.