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NumbersUSA’s Roy Beck Assesses Democrat Presidential Candidates On Immigration Issues

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As of
Click name or image at right for detailed immigration & contact information	Hillary Clinton	Barack Obama	John Edwards	Bill Richardson (withdrawn)	Joe Biden (withdrawn)	Chris Dodd (withdrawn)	Dennis Kucinich
Assessing Overall Candidate Promises (See criteria below)
No amnesty — Attrition through enforcement pushes illegal aliens back home	abysmal	abysmal	abysmal	abysmal	abysmal	abysmal	abysmal
Stop future illegal immigration	poor	poor	poor	poor	poor	fair	bad
Reduce legal immigration — Protect Americans from mass foreign worker competitions, congestion & sprawl	abysmal	abysmal	bad	bad	bad	bad	poor
Assessment of Past Immigration Actions in Political Office
Based on Congressional, Gubernatorial and Mayoral actions	bad	bad	bad	bad	bad	bad	bad
Assessing Specific Legal Immigration Stances (See criteria below)
	Clinton	Obama	Edwards	Richardson	Biden	Dodd	Kucinich
End chain migration	abysmal	abysmal	poor	abysmal	abysmal	abysmal	bad
End visa Lottery	poor	poor	poor	bad	bad	bad	bad
Control foreign worker numbers / protect U.S. workers	abysmal	abysmal	bad	poor	bad	bad	good
No citizenship for births to illegal aliens	poor	poor	poor	poor	poor	poor	poor
Assessing Specific ILLEGAL Immigration Stances (See criteria below)
	Clinton	Obama	Edwards	Richardson	Biden	Dodd	Kucinich
Mandatory workplace verification	poor	good	poor	fair	fair	fair	fair
Punish employers who hire illegal aliens	good	good	poor	good	fair	poor	poor
Local enforcement of federal immigration laws	fair	bad	poor	poor	poor	fair	abysmal
Implement entry-exit system	bad	poor	good	poor	bad	bad	bad
More security at borders	fair	fair	fair	fair	fair	fair	abysmal
End sanctuary cities	poor	bad	poor	bad	bad	bad	bad
Prohibit states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens	fair	abysmal	bad	abysmal	good	excellent	bad
Prohibit in-state tuition to illegal aliens	bad	abysmal	bad	bad	bad	bad	poor
	Hillary Clinton	Barack Obama	John Edwards	Bill Richardson	Joe Biden	Chris Dodd	Dennis Kucinich

SOURCES & EXPLANATIONS

ASSESSMENTS CHANGE WITH THE CANDIDATES: The NumbersUSA staff updates the candidate information pages every day. NumbersUSA Founder and CEO Roy Beck looks at those updates and adjusts his grading of the candidates based on the newest information of changes in candidate comments.

ROY BECK’S CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING: “I look at these candidates ONLY in terms of what they have done about immigration and what they are promising to do on the issue.

“I grade all these candidates on how well they promise to carry out the recommendations of two national commissions in the 1990s and on other widely accepted goals for reducing overall illegal and legal immigration.

“I know that citizens choose to support a candidate based on many issues and on character and on past experience. I don’t endorse candidates because I don’t consider all those other aspects of the whole candidate. But I do candidly assess how each of them stacks up on immigration issues.

“I give the most weight to an official statement of promises, unless the candidate has said or done something since stating the policy to cast doubt on the promise.

“Absent an official policy, I give considerable weight to recent public statements. I leave room for candidates to shift positions; I don’t forever label them based on past statements or actions. The point here is what a candidate is most likely to do in the future as President, not grade them on past performances. But when current statements are ambiguous, contradictory, less than enthusiastically embraced or non-existent, I use past actions to help assess.

"If a candidate has said or done something new that calls into question a rating in a category, we will place black question marks (? ? ? ?) until we have sorted out where the rating should be."

If a candidate has taken no stand and made no statements about one of the issues on the grid, I give a "poor" rating because the candidate has failed to respond in any way to a crucial aspect of the immigration problem.

Most of the campaigns have contacted us at NumbersUSA to contest one or more ratings, and to ask how they can get better ratings. Staffers of a number of campaigns have sought to assure us that their candidate is really better than he/she appears in public on a particular issue. We appreciate the information from the staffers, but until a stance shows up on the official website or in comments made in public by the candidates themselves, we won't change the rating.

“If you don’t like my assessment of a candidate because you think I have used faulty information, contact us with your information.  If you want your favorite candidate to get a better assessment from me, work to get that candidate to make better, more convincing promises on immigration.”