Immigrant citizenship path a must for Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton poses for photos Tuesday at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, where she spoke out for “full and equal citizenship” as a central part of immigration changes.
Hillary Rodham Clinton poses for photos Tuesday at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, where she spoke out for “full and equal citizenship” as a central part of immigration changes.

LAS VEGAS -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that any immigration overhaul must include a path to "full and equal citizenship," drawing a contrast with Republicans who have promoted providing a different legal status or blocked efforts in Congress to address the nation's immigration system.

"This is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side. Make no mistake, not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship. Not one," Clinton said, adding, "When they talk about legal status, that is code for second-class status."

Clinton's remarks during her first campaign stop in Nevada underscored Democrats' efforts to box in Republican presidential candidates who have opposed a comprehensive bill including a pathway to citizenship. Congressional Republicans have said immigration changes must be made incrementally, beginning with stronger border security.

The issue of immigration resonates with many Hispanic Americans, who backed President Barack Obama by wide margins over Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 and helped the president's re-election campaign capture several hard-fought swing states, including Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

Two of her potential Republican rivals, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have courted Hispanics and talked about ways to overhaul the immigration system while opposing Obama's executive actions last year to shield from deportation millions of people who are in the country illegally.

Obama's executive actions loom large in the immigration debate. The orders included the expansion of a program protecting young foreigners from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Another provision extended deportation protections to parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for several years.

Twenty-six states, including Nevada, have sued to block the plan. A New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel heard arguments on the challenges last month. A ruling is pending.

Clinton, the leading Democrat in the presidential race, said she supported Obama's executive actions and said she would "defend" them against Republican opposition while seeking ways to expand them if elected president.

She specifically mentioned young people who have been protected from deportation by Obama's executive actions.

"I don't understand how anyone can look at these young people and think that we should break up more families or turn away young people with talent," she said. "So I will fight for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship."

Clinton also said she was worried about the use of family detention centers to hold women and children caught up in the immigration system, which activists have said is inhumane.

Her framing of the immigration debate has been closely watched by Hispanics and immigration advocates as Obama has struggled to get legislation to overhaul the immigration system through Congress.

For Clinton, "the $64 million question is will she continue the executive actions," said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

While serving in the Senate, Clinton co-sponsored three versions of a bill to create a path to citizenship for young people brought into the country as children. She was also one of two co-sponsors of Sen. Ted Kennedy's 2004 S.O.L.V.E Act, which would have modified visa programs and enforcement procedures, and backed other measures in the chamber.

In 2008, Clinton said that, if elected, she would introduce a comprehensive plan on immigration during the first 100 days of her presidency that would include a path to citizenship.

Since then, Clinton has said she supports Obama's executive actions to slow deportations, calling them a "historic step" in the right direction until a more comprehensive overhaul can be enacted.

"I support the president's decision to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families," she said in November, adding that the House's inaction on an immigration-overhaul bill that the Senate passed in 2013 justified the president's actions.

But Clinton has been tripped up by immigration policy before. During the 2008 primaries, she initially vacillated on and then opposed allowing people living in the U.S. illegally to obtain driver's licenses. Her campaign said last month she now supports state policies that allow driver's licenses under those circumstances.

In the fall, some young Hispanics heckled her at a few campaign events, urging her to pressure Obama to issue the executive orders.

Preparing for a debate over immigration, Republicans have sought to portray Clinton as opportunistic on the issue.

"Obviously she's pretty good at pandering and flipping and flopping and doing and saying anything she needs to say," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said during an event with Hispanic Republicans in Denver.

After campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton made her first visit to Nevada since announcing her campaign last month. The state holds an early contest on the Democratic primary calendar and is expected to be a general election battleground with Republicans.

Clinton won the 2008 Democratic caucuses in Nevada, but Obama came away with a slight edge in the number of delegates because of his strength in rural areas.

Later Tuesday, Clinton attended a suburban Las Vegas fundraiser hosted by Brian Greenspun, a college classmate of her husband, former President Bill Clinton. He also is the chairman of Greenspun Media, which publishes the Las Vegas Sun.

Clinton is scheduled to spend the rest of the week in California at fundraisers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

Foundation in spotlight

As Clinton appealed to Hispanic voters, Bill and Chelsea Clinton were convening foreign leaders at a resort in Marrakesh, Morocco, to showcase their foundation's charitable work. But the conference also highlighted new concerrns about the Clinton family's vast philanthropic enterprises.

A liberal human-rights organization and several Republican lawmakers are criticizing the Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from a Moroccan government-owned mining company, whose seven-figure sponsorship of this week's gathering came amid growing scrutiny of foreign-government donations.

Meanwhile, some blue-chip companies that have long provided large donations to the Clinton Foundation are pulling back or reassessing their support.

An Exxon Mobil spokesman said this week that the company has decided not to be involved in the Clinton Global Initiative this year. The oil company said its decision was unrelated to recent scrutiny of the foundation, but this is the first year it has not been a sponsor since 2009.

Other sponsors, including Monsanto, said they are re-evaluating their partnerships.

This week's Morocco conference -- a first-ever Africa and Middle East spinoff of the flagship Clinton Global Initiative held each September in New York -- cast new light on the foundation's fundraising practices, which have become a potential anchor on Hillary Clinton's campaign.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Chelsea Clinton, the foundation's vice chairman, defended its work and suggested that scrutiny was politically motivated.

"My family is no stranger to scrutiny and neither is the foundation," she said. "It has been under intense scrutiny since inception. When you mix together the higher level of scrutiny around the foundation and then the political dimension, I'm not surprised."

The Morocco conference offers the latest examples of the Clinton Foundation accepting money from foreign entities. The event is sponsored by an array of global corporations, including the state-owned Office Cherifien des Phosphates, or OCP, which has given between $1 million and $5 million overall to the foundation and which is sponsoring the Morocco conference.

Human-rights advocates -- and several members of Congress -- have criticized the company's mining operations in the Western Sahara territory because they claim that Office Cherifien des Phosphates does not have the consent of the indigenous population there.

The Moroccan government has disputed such charges. Nonetheless, U.S. Reps. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., and Christopher Smith, R-N.J. wrote the Clinton Foundation last month urging it to refuse the Moroccan contribution, citing human-rights and fair-trade concerns.

"This donation is an example of a blatant conflict of interest" for the Clintons, Pitts said in a statement. "Morocco would like nothing more than having a possible future First Family condone its illegal exploitation of natural resources."

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights has also expressed concern about the company's operations in Western Sahara and the message the company conveys through participation with organizations such as the Clinton Foundation.

"OCP's operations in Western Sahara are only appropriate under international law if they are acting in the best interests of the people of Western Sahara, and right now they are not," said David McKean, a senior program officer at the center. "The fact that OCP carries out its operations in Western Sahara so publicly seems intended to send the message that they feel they can do so with impunity."

Craig Minassian, spokesman for the Clinton Foundation, referred questions to representatives of the company.

Talal Zouaoui, a company spokesman, said contrary to the complaints of activists, the phosphate mining operation is closely connected to the local community. All profits from that mine are reinvested in the plant and the surrounding area, he said.

Over the past week, Bill and Chelsea Clinton toured four African countries with a delegation of billionaires, lobbyists and business executives who have given generously to the Clinton Foundation and now are raising money for Hillary Clinton's campaign, blurring the line between politics and philanthropy.

In the Post interview, Chelsea Clinton dismissed the suggestion that donors gave to the foundation -- and came along on the Africa trip -- to curry favor with her parents.

"What people who choose to partner with us, whether it's in a financial capacity or a programmatic capacity, expect to get is the work that we've seen on this trip," she said during the visit to Kenya. "They expect to make a difference in stopping elephant poaching. They expect to make a difference in expanding secondary education for girls."

Chelsea Clinton added: "Whenever I have had a conversation with anyone, it's always about the work. I've never had anyone talk to me about my parents in a political capacity for a foundation program."

Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas, Lisa Lerer and Nicholas Riccardi of The Associated Press; by Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News; and by Philip Rucker, Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Kevin Sieff of The Washington Post.

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