Hillary Clinton said at the Munich Security Conference that migration has “gone too far” and become “disruptive and destabilizing,” arguing governments need to fix the issue “in a humane way” while maintaining secure borders. Her comments echoed language that has recently circulated widely from the event and contrasted with some of her past emphasis on immigration’s economic benefits and her criticism of Trump-era family separations.
Hillary Clinton appeared on a Munich Security Conference panel titled “The West–West Divide: What Remains of Common Values,” where she addressed the politics of migration in the United States and Europe.
During the discussion, Clinton said, “There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. 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.” Reports of the panel and a circulating clip attributed the remarks to Clinton at the conference.
The comments came after Clinton, in other settings, has stressed immigration’s economic contributions. In remarks described by Fox News, she said at the Newmark Civic Life Series in Manhattan that U.S. economic performance relative to other advanced economies benefited from “a replenishment” driven by immigrants, “legally and undocumented,” including families with higher-than-average birth rates.
Clinton has also been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s practice of separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. In a June 1, 2018 post on what is now X, she wrote: “It is now the official policy of the US government — a nation of immigrants — to separate children from their families. That is an absolute disgrace. #FamiliesBelongTogether.”
During her 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton opposed a large-scale expansion of a border wall while saying barriers could be appropriate in some locations. She supported President Barack Obama’s executive actions that sought to defer immigration enforcement for certain undocumented immigrants, and she said she wanted to end the practice of detaining families as part of immigration enforcement.
Her 2016 campaign platform also included a proposal to expand access to Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage to families regardless of immigration status by allowing them to purchase insurance on the exchanges.
Separately, video of a 1993 health-care-related hearing has been cited by partisan outlets as showing Clinton arguing that comprehensive benefits should not be extended to “undocumented workers and illegal aliens,” adding that policymakers should not “encourage more illegal immigration.” The full context and exact phrasing of that exchange could not be independently confirmed from an accessible official transcript in this review.
Taken together, Clinton’s public record reflects shifting emphasis over time—alternating between arguments about economic contributions and humanitarian protections on the one hand, and calls for stronger border enforcement and limits on public benefits on the other—as immigration has remained a persistent and politically charged issue in the United States and across Europe.
