Former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-Md.) said Sunday that Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have outdated ideas about immigration.
“When you listen to the two of them talk about immigration, you can tell they are very much of yesterday’s mindset,” he said in Las Vegas, according to The Washington Post.
{mosads}“We are not going to solve this problem with poll-tested triangulation and half-truths, nor will we solve this problem by falsely asserting that immigrants take our jobs or lower our wages,” O’Malley told listeners during the Fair Immigration Reform Movement presidential candidates’ forum, The Post reported.
“To solve this problem, we need new leadership, principled leadership based on what is best for country and our economy,” he added.
White House hopeful O’Malley argued that Clinton took a timid approach on immigration reform during her tenure as a New York senator.
“In 2007, when new American immigrants in New York had the opportunity for New York to do as Maryland had done and pass driver’s licenses for new American immigrants … [former] Secretary [of State] Clinton had her campaign call up the then-governor of New York and begged him to pull the bill because it was getting in the way of her politics and campaign,” he reportedly said, referencing former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D).
O’Malley then set his sights on Sanders by criticizing the lawmaker’s past remarks on the impact immigrants have on the economy.
“When comprehensive immigration reform was up for a vote in Congress, Senator Sanders went on Lou Dobbs’s show and said that immigrants take our jobs and depress our wages,” he said, according to The Post. “Not only are those statements flat-out wrong, they actually harm the consensus.”
O’Malley additionally touted his policies helping Maryland’s immigrants, including passing the DREAM Act there and raising his state’s minimum wage.
“Anyone can talk about it but we actually did it,” he said of immigration reform, according to The Post.
O’Malley’s remains a distant third for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. He currently trails Clinton by 53 percent and Sanders by nearly 31 percent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of samplings.