Hillary Clinton on the Issues: Where the Candidate Stands on Immigration, Women's Rights, and More
Since officially launching her second bid for president last April, Hillary Clinton has run a successful campaign and maintained a strong lead in the Democratic primary race.
She has positioned herself as a champion for women's rights and proudly embraces the thought of becoming the first female president in U.S. history. She has also put immigration reform, racial equality and Wall Street reform at the forefront of her campaign.
Here's where she stands on five key issues.
Immigration
The former secretary of state promises to create a pathway to citizenship, keep families together, and enable millions of undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows if she wins the White House.
According to her website, her proposal on immigration reform includes closing private immigrant detention centers and putting an end to family detention. Instead of detaining parents and children who arrive at our border in desperate situations, she suggests that immigrants who pose no flight or public safety risk should have the option of supervised release.
She also vows to defend President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration. Obama has worked to provide deportation relief for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children known as DREAMers and the parents of American-born children.
"We have to finally and once and for all fix our immigration system - this is a family issue, it's an economic issue too, but it is at heart a family issue," said Clinton last May. "If we claim we are for family then we have to pull together and resolve the outstanding issues around our broken immigration system."
Furthermore, Clinton proposes to expand medical coverage to immigrants regardless of their legal status by allowing them to buy into the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges.
Racial Equality
Throughout her campaign, the Clinton camp has put a lot of emphasis on racial justice by speaking with leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement. She has also reached out to black mothers who lost their sons at the hands of white police officers and vigilantes.
To combat racism and racial oppression, the former first lady plans to end the mass incarceration of black and brown people by cutting mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, eliminating the sentencing disparity for crack and cocaine, rehabilitating rather than arresting low-level drug offenders, and ending the privatization of prisons.
She also plans to invest and reform schools to end the school-to-prison pipeline, which sends a disproportionate amount of young black and brown people to jail.
She also plans to invest $20 billion in jobs for young African-Americans, Native Americans and Latinos in order to help balance the playing field between people of color and white Americans. In addition, she would allocate $5 billion to create reentry programs that would help formerly incarcerated Americans.
Women's Rights and Opportunity
As a strong advocate for women's rights, the former first lady vows to close the pay gap by working to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would give women tools and resources to fight workplace discrimination.
Clinton also plans to protect women's health and reproductive rights by fighting against Republicans who wish to defund Planned Parenthood. Plus, she will protect the Affordable Care Act, which bans insurance companies from discriminating against women and guarantees millions of women access to preventive care.
Wall Street Reform
Despite her past ties to Wall Street, Clinton promises to be tough on the banking and financial institutions responsible for the 2008 economic recession.
On her website, she says she will hold individuals and corporations accountable when they break the law by extending the statute of limitations for prosecuting major financial frauds and by enhancing whistleblower rewards.
To enforce accountability against corporations, she will make sure that corporations don't treat penalties for breaking the law as merely a cost of doing business. She says she can put an end to the patterns of corporate wrongdoing that occur too often today.
"Our banking system is still too complex and too risky ... While institutions have paid large fines and in some cases admitted guilt, too often it has seemed that the human beings responsible get off with limited consequences - or none at all, even when they've already pocketed the gains. This is wrong, and on my watch, it will change," said Clinton last July.
Gun Violence Prevention
Clinton has also talked about enforcing tougher gun regulation laws to help curb gun violence in America. She proposes to do this by strengthening background checks to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, domestic abusers, violent criminals and those suffering from mental illness.
She also wants to close dangerous loopholes in the current system, like the exception that allows a gun sale to proceed without a completed background check if that check has not been completed within three days.
Watch a video of Clinton speaking about immigration reform below.
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