Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is once again recalibrating her message on immigration, this time acknowledging that mass migration has “gone too far” and calling for secure borders during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Speaking on a panel titled “The West–West Divide: What Remains of Common Values,” Clinton conceded that public concern over migration is legitimate. “There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration,” she said. “It went too far, it’s been disruptive and destabilizing, and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people.”
Her remarks stand in notable contrast to positions she has taken in recent years, when she frequently emphasized the economic benefits of immigration and echoed arguments commonly made by Democratic leaders. As recently as last year, speaking at the Newmark Civic Life Series in Manhattan, Clinton credited immigration — both legal and undocumented — with strengthening the U.S. workforce.
“One of the reasons why our economy did so much better than comparable advanced economies across the world is because we actually had a replenishment, because we had a lot of immigrants, legally and undocumented, who had a, you know, larger than normal — by American standards — families,” she said at the time.
Clinton’s latest comments also represent a shift from her sharp criticism of immigration enforcement policies during the Trump administration. In 2018, she denounced the policy of separating children from their families at the border, writing on X, “It is now the official policy of the U.S. government — a nation of immigrants — to separate children from their families. That is an absolute disgrace.”
During her 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton opposed large-scale expansion of a border wall and supported executive actions taken by then-President Barack Obama that deferred immigration enforcement against millions of illegal immigrants. She advocated ending family detention and often emphasized humanitarian considerations over strict enforcement measures.
Her 2016 campaign platform also included a proposal to expand the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to families regardless of immigration status. Clinton stated that her goal was to “expand access to affordable health care to all families … regardless of immigration status.”
Yet earlier in her political career, Clinton took a markedly different position. In a 1993 congressional hearing, she argued that comprehensive health care benefits should not be extended to undocumented workers, saying, “We do not think the comprehensive health care benefits should be extended to those who are undocumented workers and illegal aliens. We do not want to do anything to encourage more illegal immigration.”
Taken together, Clinton’s decades-long record on immigration reveals a series of evolving positions. From warning in the 1990s that benefits for undocumented immigrants could encourage further illegal immigration, to later supporting expanded protections and government access regardless of status, and now returning to language focused on border security, her public stance has repeatedly shifted.
Her latest comments in Munich suggest a return to rhetoric centered on enforcement and border control, albeit framed as “humane.” Critics have long argued that her positions on major policy questions tend to align closely with the political climate of the moment. With her recent acknowledgment that migration has been “disruptive and destabilizing,” Clinton appears to have come full circle on one of the most contentious issues in American politics.
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