(This article is excerpted from The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America by Jonathan Tasini (Chelsea Green Publishing, September 2015) and is published here with permission of the publisher. The book will be available nationwide on September 8th, which is Sanders’ birthday. For more information.)

“The DREAM Act is really about hard work, fairness, education and parents making sacrifices for their children so that way they can have a better life.”

—Flavia de la Fuenta, student, California

Bernie, like millions of Americans, is the son of an immigrant family. He has often said that the story of today’s immigrants is the story of his life. From that experience, Bernie has been motivated to strongly support a comprehensive immigration bill, including the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors [DREAM] Act, to protect workers and their families and grant citizenship to millions of people who work hard in the shadows of the economy, particularly millions of Latino workers and their families.

Bernie has also been clear that immigration reform cannot allow corporations to exploit workers. He has regularly pointed out that corporate advocates for immigration overhaul include Motorola, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, and Boeing, which have outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas and have announced major layoffs of thousands of American workers. Those companies, Bernie says, have to be prevented from pushing through immigration laws that advance a cost-cutting, anti-worker agend.—J.T.

(Bernie’s speech to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, June 19, 2015)

It is no great secret that across the United States undocumented workers perform a critical role in our economy. They harvest and process our food and it is no exaggeration to say that, without them, food production in the United States would significantly decline. Undocumented workers build many of our homes, cook our meals, maintain our landscapes. We even entrust undocumented workers with that which we hold most dear—our children.

Despite the central role they play in our economy and in our daily lives, undocumented workers are reviled by many for political gain and shunted into the shadows. . . . It is time for this disgraceful situation to end. This country faces enormous problems and they will not be solved unless we are united. It is time to end the politics of division on this country, of politicians playing one group of people against another: white against black, male against female, straight against gay, native born against immigrant.

That is why I supported the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform legislation in the United States Senate. While a complicated piece of comprehensive legislation like this can always be improved I believed then and now that it is time to end the discussion of mass deportation or self-deportation. We cannot and we should not even be talking about sweeping up millions of men, women, and children—many of whom have been here for years—and throwing them out of the country. That’s wrong and that type of discussion has got to end. . . .

I strongly support the Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA a good first step, but should be expanded. Deferred action should include the parents of citizens, parents of legal permanent residents, and the parents of DREAMERs. We should be pursuing policies that unite families—not tear them apart.

I continue to be a strong supporter of the DREAM Act, which would offer the opportunity of permanent residency and eventual citizenship to young people who were brought to the United States as children. It is my belief that we should recognize the young men and women who comprise the DREAMers for what they are—American kids who deserve the right to legally be in the country they know as home.