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Where The 2016 Candidates Stand On Immigration, In One Chart

As the rhetoric around immigration has heated up during this presidential campaign, many candidates' views have shifted ... and some still remain unclear.
Robyn Beck
/
AFP/Getty Images
As the rhetoric around immigration has heated up during this presidential campaign, many candidates' views have shifted ... and some still remain unclear.

Immigration is shaping up to be one of the most contentious and emotional topics in the 2016 presidential race. It's also one on which candidates' views aren't yet fully formed.

It turns out that nailing down candidates' stances on immigration is really hard. They change their minds (or, at least, their messaging) fairly often, and they place a lot of conditions on what they want: mandatory E-Verify, but only if the system is revamped to work better. A path to legal status, but only once the border is secure (which raises another question: Does "secure border" mean the same thing to everyone?).

But it's worth it to figure this out. After research and reaching out to campaigns, here's our rundown of where candidates fall on six different immigration policy questions. (We plan to do this for other topics throughout the campaign season, as well. Check out our climate change table here.)

With research from Barbara Sprunt.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Danielle Kurtzleben is a political correspondent assigned to NPR's Washington Desk. She appears on NPR shows, writes for the web, and is a regular on The NPR Politics Podcast. She is covering the 2020 presidential election, with particular focuses on on economic policy and gender politics.