Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a press conference Friday to discuss the current immigration policies.
Kennedy, who is running as a Democratic candidate for president against incumbent Joe Biden, criticized the recent response from the White House as migrants are increasingly crossing the border illegally. The candidate claimed at the conference that immigration “shouldn’t be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue.”
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“Giving 470,000 migrants work visas is a signal to the rest of the world that anyone who comes to this country is going to get a work visa. And that’s the last thing we want to signal at this point,” Kennedy said. “Until the border is secure, we should not be talking about work visas for anybody.”
Meanwhile, fellow Democratic Party member Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) celebrated the announcement from the Department of Homeland Security of fast-track work documents for nearly half a million Venezuelan illegal immigrants. The governor has been advocating similar policies since last year as the state has suffered a work shortage. However, Kennedy shared his suspicions that Biden’s policies are only encouraging more illegal crossings.
“Since Biden was elected, 7 million immigrants have come across the border illegally,” Kennedy said. “In the same period, just 3.1 million arrived legally. What that means is the Mexican drug cartels are driving American border policy.”
As far as his own proposed policies, Kennedy called on both political parties to meet in the middle, particularly calling on his own party to shift more toward the middle.
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“As President, I will make the border impenetrable to illegal migrants, but we can’t afford to wait a year and a half for that to happen. That is why I am calling on Democratic and Republican leaders to unify on this issue,” Kennedy said. “I’m asking Democrats, in particular, to reexamine their assumption that a loose border is somehow more compassionate. It is not. It has created a humanitarian crisis for the migrants that is now destroying our cities, crushing our social services, and harming the working poor by undercutting their wages.”
In addition to facing off against the incumbent president, Kennedy has a second opponent for the job in author Marianne Williamson, who is also opposed to an open border but would abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement if elected.
