There are many reasons that as a Bronx resident, state Assemblyman, and a Puerto Rican, I support Senator Bernie Sanders in New York’s April 19 Democratic presidential primary. Here are just three of them.

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate with a record and a plan for comprehensive and humane immigration reform policies.

Unlike his opponent, Senator Sanders supports not only maintaining but expanding President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans to provide broad relief to the parents of DREAMers, of citizens, of legal permanent residents, and other immigrants.

Well within the president’s executive authority, it would allow all undocumented people who have been in the United States for at least five years to remain here without fear of deportation.

His plan will dismantle inhumane deportation programs and detention centers, pave the way for citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, and regulate the future flow of immigrants by modernizing the visa system.

As president, Sanders will expand the use of humanitarian parole to ensure the return of unjustly deported immigrants, and reunite broken families, as well as decoupling federal immigration enforcement from routine local policing.

For me as a Puerto Rican, Bernie’s policies to resolve the island’s financial crisis are of enormous significance. His opponent has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the hedge funds that are strangling Puerto Rico, while he has not accepted one red cent from them.

Sanders has also called on Congress to give Puerto Rico the same authority granted to every U.S. municipality to restructure its debt under the supervision of a bankruptcy court. He also promotes strong investment in the island’s infrastructure that would create more than 130,000 jobs.

Finally, unlike his opponent, Senator Sanders believes in ending federal prohibition on marijuana use, instead leaving it up to the states. Aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people – the majority of them black and Latino – into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars.

As a Latino and a New Yorker, I look forward to having a President who will fight for our community and not for the interests of the top one percent. As the son of an immigrant and a native New Yorker, I know that Bernie Sanders can do the job, and he can do it right.

Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda

Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda represents the 87th Assembly District covering Parkchester, West Farms, Soundview and Castle Hill. 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.