On Thursday’s broadcast of ABC’s “GMA3,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) stated that he doesn’t think Israel and Ukraine money “should necessarily be held hostage for” border and immigration policy, but also lamented the lack of protections or a path to legal status for some people in the country illegally in the talks.
Padilla said, “[F]or whatever reason, folks have chosen to try to link this negotiation to border and immigration policy, which is important, but I don’t think one should necessarily be held hostage for the other.”
He added that there is a difference between people coming to the U.S. now and “some of the people who have been in the United States for a long time, yes, undocumented, we know many of them as DREAMers, young people who were brought here by their parents when they were infants in many cases, but have done well here in school, they’re working, contributing to the success of our communities and our country. You go into the agricultural fields, many here in California, and you see so many farm workers doing work that nobody else would even dream of doing, helping keep food on our tables, but they happen to be undocumented. Especially given their service during the course of the pandemic, they deserve better than to live in constant fear of deportation. So, as far as I can tell, the negotiations on border policy have not even considered providing protections or a pathway — not even to citizenship, just to legal residence status — for these folks that we applauded so much during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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