SAN DIEGO _ Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has been making his presence known in San Diego County, visiting the region more than any other presidential candidate this year.
But before Sanders took the stage for his fourth event in San Ysidro on Friday night, his campaign invited a reporter from the Union-Tribune for a brief one-on-one chat. Here's what he had to say:
Q: You've said day one of your presidency you'd push Congress to enact a fair pathway to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S. What do you think a fair pathway looks like?
A: Let me back it up and say that on the first day what we will do is rescind all of Trump's racist immigration executive orders. And on the first day we will re-establish legal status for the 1.8 million young people in DACA and their parents, that's what we'll do on day one. What we'll also do is end private prisons and detention centers, and we will also change border policy so that no child is ever torn from the arms of their mother or children are put into cages. That is what we can do on day one.
In terms of comprehensive immigration reform, as you know that is not something a president can do alone, you need to work with Congress on that. I can't go into all of the details, but under my view all undocumented people must be given a path toward citizenship and that is something we are going to have to work out with Congress. And frankly it is something that has to be done in a bipartisan way. But I think Trump's demonization of the undocumented community is not something Americans want to see and they do believe in a path toward citizenship and that is something we will provide.
Q: Your immigration platform highlights decriminalizing immigration and criticizes punitive policies being applied to border crossings. So under a Sanders presidency what would be the policy if someone were to cross the border or enter the U.S. not at a point of entry?
A: We will decriminalize it as it has previously been. It will be a civil offense, instead of a criminal offense. And that means it will not necessitate the breaking up of families.
Second of all, what is extremely important is right now we have a massive backlog in terms of asylum cases. Asylum is an international standard in which people who are fleeing political violence or religious violence have a right to apply for asylum. Right now we lack many, many hundred of administrative judges in order to move that process along. So what we will do is hire the many hundreds of judges that we need so that when people apply for asylum they will get a hearing in a reasonable time period and a judgment will be made on whether they are eligible for asylum based on their histories.
Q: In a different direction, San Diego County is home to huge numbers of active service members and military families. Under your administration would operations tempo increase, decrease or stay the same?
A: We can't predict what is going to happen in the world. I voted against the first Gulf War. It was one of the first votes that I cast when I entered Congress in '91. I voted against the war in Iraq. I am working as hard as I can to end the war in Yemen and U.S. involvement in that war.
I believe, everything being equal, we have to go the extra mile through diplomacy, through negotiations, to try and bring people together. And war should be the last resource, not the first. I will do everything I can to bring our troops home from around the world, to end the endless wars which have cost us too many lives, displaced and killed too many people all over the world and have cost us trillions of dollars.
The whole idea of the war on terror has got to be rethought. So I would do everything I can to prevent wars.
Q: Last one, you've been to California a lot, one of the biggest issues out here is the housing crisis. Do you see anything you could do as president to address that problem?
A: Absolutely. What you have to understand is affordable housing and homelessness are major issues in California, I know that. They're major issues all over this country. Tonight in America we will have half a million Americans including thousands of veterans sleeping out on the streets or in emergency shelters. Over half a million people in our country are homeless and on top of that you've got about 18 million Americans who are spending 50% of their limited incomes on housing, which is just outrageous. So we need a major housing program to build affordable housing, to build low-income housing, to fight against gentrification and huge increases in rents.
We have a housing proposal that will build up to 10 million units of housing which will end homelessness, which will lower rents, I hope, for people around the country, and which will create very substantial number of good paying jobs.
