Democratic presidential candidate nominee Bernie Sanders has hired immigration law activist and Dreamer Cesar Vargas, it was revealed by Univision yesterday. Vargas had already given his endorsement to Sanders’ campaign back in June, when he published an opinion piece in the Huffington Post calling on Latinos to back him.
“I am here to tell the Latino community that we need Bernie Sanders, and vice versa,” Vargas wrote, saying that the Latino demographic will be crucial to who wins the battle for the White House next year and that Sanders was clearly the community’s best choice, especially when it comes to immigration reform. Yesterday Vargas also revealed that he has a personal connection to the presidential candidate nominee, having attended the same high school and grown up in Brooklyn.
The place that Vargas holds in the eyes of the Dreamer activist community is difficult to overstate. Many Dreamers have to go through undergraduate studies without government loans or even legal permission to do so, and Vargas made it right through law school and became the first undocumented immigrant to be allowed to practice law in the state of New York after taking his case to the New York Bar Association.
“I think that Senator [Sanders] took a step further than the rest,” Vargas said in an interview with Univision. “Not only did he meet with Dreamers because they are good people, as Hillary Clinton has said, but he also included us in his team in order to make sure that his platform includes the issues and the needs of our community.”