In December 2019, an image appeared that purportedly showed a policy page on Andrew Yang’s Yang2020.com website with the subheading “Make Them Earn It” under the title “Pathway to Citizenship”:
The fuzzy image, which was apparently captured on a mobile phone, showed a “Yang 2020” logo, and a title:
PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP (MAKE THEM EARN IT)
Someone underlined “make them earn it,” as well as sections reading:
- “… we need to maintain control of our immigration system“;
- ” … invested immigrants can come to this country and assimilate, becoming new Americans who contribute greatly to our society;”
- “… they’re not supposed to be here.”
However, no browser bar address was visible, making it more difficult to determine if the page was either authentic or live. Searches for Andrew Yang’s name along with the relatively uncommon “make them earn it” phrase turned up discourse suggestive that the page existed, but no direct links.
A visit to Yang2020.com indicated that an “immigration” section had no devoted landing page, and four individual immigration-related pages:
- Pathway to Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants
- Entice High-Skill Individuals
- Support the DREAM Act
- Southern Border Security
One of the pages was headlined “Pathway to Citizenship for Undocumented Immigrants,” but “make them earn it” was not anywhere in the title of the page. That page’s URL suggested another page existed with a similar one, as it was “https://www.yang2020.com/policies/pathway-to-citizenship-2/.” Some of its text resembled that of the screenshot, but other wording was not the same:
Immigrants have been a source of hard work and innovation for America over the centuries. Without a doubt, the melting pot of our country has led to the most dynamic, most creative, and most successful nation in the history of the world.
It’s also necessary to recognize that, as a nation, we need to maintain control of our immigration system. The current system we have in place, when it works, does a great job of ensuring that highly skilled, hard-working, and invested immigrants can come to this country and integrate, becoming new Americans who contribute greatly to our society.
Language suggesting that”invested immigrants can come to this country and assimilate” did not appear on that page. However, another section featured the “they’re not supposed to be here” phrasing:
However, because of issues on the southern border, our immigration system has broken down, and we have over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. While these individuals are generally law-abiding people who work hard and contribute to their local communities, it’s also true that they’re not supposed to be here.
We found no trace of the “make them earn it” page on Yang2020.com — but the page did not seem to be a clever fabrication or subtle change to smear Yang.
We had to sift through the entire archive of pages from Yang2020.com to locate the original, the URL for which was “https://www.yang2020.com/policies/pathway-to-citizenship-make-them-earn-it” (archived here.) Clicking on that link redirected to the page linked above, with “2” at the end of the link.
Archived in March 2019, the page was titled “PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP (MAKE THEM EARN IT).” Its first three paragraphs read:
Immigrants have been a source of hard work and innovation for America over the centuries. Without a doubt, the melting pot of our country has led to the most dynamic, most creative, and most successful nation in the history of the world.
It’s also necessary to recognize that, as a nation, we need to maintain control of our immigration system. The current system we have in place, when it works, does a great job of ensuring that highly skilled, hard-working, and invested immigrants can come to this country and assimilate, becoming new Americans who contribute greatly to our society.
However, because of issues on the southern border, our immigration system has broken down, and we have over 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. While these individuals are generally law-abiding people who work hard and contribute to their local communities, it’s also true that they’re not supposed to be here.
The “Pathway to Citizenship (Make Them Earn It)” page is authentic and was once live on Andrew Yang’s website. At some point, the page was replaced with the revised version of Yang’s “Pathway to Citizenship” page, without the “make them earn it” language as well as references to assimilation. “They’re not supposed to be here” also survived the newer, arguably friendlier version of Yang’s page on citizenship options for immigrants.