Dylan Matthews: In 2007, you had some concerns about the immigration bill being weighed by the Senate, and voted against it. Now that the new Gang of Eight bill is out of committee, what do you make of it?

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Thanks for calling. Let me just say this. I'm a strong supporter of immigration reform, and of the need to provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. I very strongly support the DREAM Act, and will continue to strongly support it. I very strongly believe, as someone who knows what's going on in the dairy industry in Vermont, that there's no question we need to create a status for immigrant workers in agriculture, and I think the committee is making good progress there.

My concerns are in regards to where we stand in terms of guest workers programs, made worse by amendments offered by Senator Hatch. What I do not support is, under the guise of immigrant reform, a process pushed by large corporations which results in more unemployment and lower wages for American workers.

Under the current H-2 program overseen by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), employers brought about 106,000 guestworkers into this country in 2011 — approximately 55,000 for agricultural work and another 51,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.

But far from being treated like “guests,” these workers are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who “import” them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.

Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are routinely:

Cheated out of wages

Forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs

Held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents

Subjected to human trafficking and debt servitude

Forced to live in squalid conditions

Denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.

In fact, the documents released today show a meeting that Hillary chaired at the White House on November 10, 1993 where she promoted the passage of NAFTA to 120 people. Reports are coming out in every news agency pointing out the contradictions between her stated positions since announcing her bid for the Presidency and everything before that.

One of the things you would expect of someone who really has good experience and judgment is that they can articulate a basic set of principles and positions on issues that they can run on and defend and that stay relatively static. I'm not saying you have to stick to them in the face of overwhelming evidence that one of your positions has been proven to be wrong, like George W. Bush does, even someone who has good experience and judgment occasionally changes their mind. That is not what we have with Hillary. Hillary gives a different opinion on the same subjects every couple of weeks depending on her audience and what she thinks it will net her. As evidence of this is now coming out and is going to be presented to the American people in the starkest terms, how can one be expected to trust her to do anything that she says she is going to do? How can one really know what she believes or intends to do about anything? The only things Hillary's experience seems to be good for is perfecting how to talk out of both sides of her mouth, engaging in the politics of personal destruction and other aspects of her ruthless pursuit of power that remind one of what a Karl Rove might do. That kind of person ought not to be the Democratic nominee.

What is the proper word for the claim by Hillary Clinton and the more factually disinclined supporters of her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination - made in speeches, briefings and interviews (including one by this reporter with the candidate) - that she has always been a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement?

Now that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White House documents released this week that former First Lady was an ardent advocate for NAFTA; now that we know she held at least five meetings to strategize about how to win congressional approval of the deal; now that we know she was in the thick of the manuevering to block the efforts of labor, farm, environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement. Now that we know all of this, how should we assess the claim that Hillary's heart has always beaten to a fair-trade rhythm?

Now that we know from official records of her time as First Lady that Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC News reporting on the session that "her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA" and that "there was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time;" now that we have these details confirmed, what should we make of Clinton's campaign claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union jobs, that has idled entire industries, that has saddled this country with record trade deficits, undermined the security of working families in the US and abroad, and has forced Mexican farmers off their land into an economic refugee status that ultimately forces them to cross the Rio Grande River in search of work?