Ed Martin writes: To win in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, Rubio ran as the anti-amnesty candidate despite an aggressive pro-amnesty record. Politico reports:
“Arturo Vargas, the executive director for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles born in Miami, blocked ‘scorched-earth’ legislation that sought to clamp down on illegal immigration. ‘He, as speaker, kept many of those from coming up to a vote,’ Vargas said. ‘We were very proud of his work as speaker of the House.’
“In 2006, Rubio even voted for a bill that would have allowed the children of illegal immigrants to pay the same tuition rates at Florida colleges as residents. Vargas now says Rubio, the candidate, takes a more pointed, less nuanced tone as he stresses border enforcement and his opposition to amnesty. ‘He’s become your typical candidate in terms of playing to his primary election base…’”
Rubio used amnesty opposition to get elected before coming to Washington to push the biggest mass immigration / amnesty bill anyone had ever seen. He declared of Gov. Crist’s position that “an earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty,” and that illegals seeking citizenship should “return to their homeland,” and that “if you grant amnesty as the governor proposes that we do, in any form, whether it’s the back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America.”
THE DREAM ACT
When Rubio came to Washington he immediately began working on the DREAM Act he campaigned against. He staffed his office with several of the most pro-amnesty individuals in Washington (like Cesar Conda) and was limp to the point of lifeless in his response when the President nullified immigration law with the DREAMer executive amnesty.
Then came the Romney defeat. Billionaire donors and their pollsters declared that the GOP must pass an amnesty and mass immigration plan. Rubio then joined the Gang of Eight — whose members understood that Rubio would be able to sell their disastrous product to conservative media in a way they never could. Rubio is now cashing in his chits with the big money open-borders crowd. Or, as The Hill put it: ”A group of Republican fundraising heavyweights and wise men in Washington’s business community are solidly behind Rubio, and see him not only as someone who could win the White House, but someone they can work with.”
LYING TO CONSERVATIVE MEDIA
Rubio’s repeatedly stated reason for joining the Gang was to get the most conservative bill out of the Senate; the reality, however, was that Rubio sold Republican lawmakers on a bill radically to the left of McCain-Kennedy: a bill that granted instant legalization, doubled annual foreign worker admissions (a much larger increase than McCain-Kennedy), issued 30 million green cards, provided mass amnesty, expedited citizenship for DREAMers without an age cap, removed the limits on family-based migration, etc., etc. Rubio’s bill was supported by every single Senate Democrat, every single liberal house lawmaker, every progressive politician and group in the country, Nancy Pelosi, Luis Gutierrez, Harry Reid, La Raza, Center for American Progress, George Soros, and on and on. Of course the White House was the biggest champion.
Rubio traded shamelessly on the affection and trust conservatives had placed in him. His deceptions about his immigration bill rivaled and exceeded Obama’s claims about disastrous Obamacare.
The seminal moment of the media tour occurred early, on Rush Limbaugh’s show. He declared: “if there is not language in this bill that guarantees that nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in place, I won’t support it.” Of course, we know there wasn’t any such language but he voted for it anyway. But this promise — and many others — and the calculated neutralization of conservative media, helped Schumer get 68 votes. But conservatives trusted Rubio. Limbaugh declared: “you are meeting everybody honestly.”
Rubio told Hannity, on his media tour, that: “I don’t think any of that [amnesty] begins until we certify that the border security progress has been real. That a workplace enforcement mechanism is in place. That we are tracking visitors to our country, especially when they exit.” This prompted Hannity to reply: “It’s probably the most thoughtful bill that I have heard heretofore.” At this point, it looked like the biggest mass immigration plan in history would breeze through Congress — all without Rubio saying a word about what was really in the heart of the bill: the largest immigration expansion in American history. To this day, Rubio will not answer if asked about how many green cards his bill gave out.
Some of the most-repeated untruths flatly ignored the most basic features of the bill. For instance, in explaining his endorsement of Rubio’s product, Bill O’Reilly said: “Senator Rubio told me on the phone today that it would be at least 13 years, 13, before people in the country illegally right now could gain full legal working status and even longer to achieve citizenship.” In actuality, they gain legal working status the moment the bill is enacted, and the citizenship provisions begin in 5 years, starting with the DREAMers (who will then be able to get green cards for their foreign relatives).
Rubio pledged in an ABC news interview: “We are going to get the toughest enforcement measures in the history of this country.” When the bill was introduced, Rubio put out a fact-check — and linked up with donors to run ads to the same effect — which declared Schumer’s plan to be “THE TOUGHEST BORDER SECURITY AND ENFORCEMENT PLAN IN U.S. HISTORY.” And people believed him.
As the Washington Times reported:
“Mr. Rubio’s main public role in the debate wasn’t about amendments or specifics; it was about selling the measure to a skeptical conservative electorate. As a face of the 2010 tea party revolution, Mr. Rubio had the kind of lingering good will that gave him the opening Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican and another key bill author, had long since squandered with much of their party.
“Mr. Rubio’s office said he averaged three or four cable television news appearances a week, appeared on every major nationally syndicated talk radio program — often more than once — and visited smaller shows, too.
“He set what pundits said was a record by doing seven Sunday political talk shows the same weekend in April — all five English-language shows and two Spanish-language programs. Mr. Rubio also did four or five Spanish-language interviews a week during the immigration debate.”
When people started discovering how the bill violated every one of his promises, Rubio would just insist — without evidence, without page numbers, without citations — that charges were untrue. For instance: “In an interview with Ted Cruz, Mark Levin revealed that Rubio texted him about an hour before this interview and told him that what he is saying about the Senate immigration bill is not accurate. He told Cruz that Rubio flat out denies that Napolitano can ignore portions of the bill due to waivers and he asks Cruz if that is correct.”
And yet, to this day, Rubio has not only never retracted one of his false statements — never admitted any wrongdoing — but never even apologized to those he deceived, and their millions of listeners. Instead, he is raising more money and telling the same lies all over again, as he continues his push for mass amnesty and mass immigration.
BACK TAXES AND BACKGROUND CHECKS
Rubio said, often and repeatedly, (and does to this day in pitching his immigration plans) that illegals would have to “pay taxes and undergo a background check.” As we know now from the executive amnesty, there is no such thing as “back taxes,” for illegal immigrants as most have no net tax liability. Giving illegals Social Security numbers and the ability to collect tax credits represents a huge net cost to taxpayers, whereby the IRS mails illegal immigrants thousands of dollars in free benefits. Those granted amnesty under the plan became immediately eligible for ACTC and EITC. Amendments to actually require illegal immigrants to pay back taxes were defeated in the committee.
As for background checks, his bill allows the Secretary to grant amnesty to serious criminals including known gang members; those with convictions for serious crimes such as drug trafficking, sexual abuse, prostitution; those with any type of arrest record; fugitives from deportation orders and those who have been deported — for any reason — and are no longer in the country, or have illegally re-entered after being deported.
ADMINISTRATIVE DISCRETION
One of the big jokes in the behemoth bill was that the pointless enforcement mechanisms were all at the discretion of the Administration. Rubio explained: “the security triggers are not left at the discretion of politicians with agendas. Real measurable results must be achieved, and politicians cannot override them.” As it was, this whole thing was happening in a post-executive amnesty environment. But the bill drastically expanded executive discretion beyond imagination. In fact, Rubio’s immigration bill — designed by open borders advocates to end immigration law enforcement — had more waivers per page than Obamacare!
WE’LL FIX THE BILL
When criticism reached a point Rubio could not easily paper over, he adopted a new tactic: promising to fix the bill before it passed. In a closed-door House meeting, Rubio pledged to conservative lawmakers that he would oppose the bill unless it was fixed. As ABC wrote: “now that he’s hearing serious resistance to the bill from his fellow conservatives, he’s threatening to vote ‘no’ on the very bill he helped write unless changes are made to strengthen the border security provisions.” Washington Post wrote: “Rubio’s been saying for weeks that he can’t support the bill in its current form.” Rubio even launched a page on his website, saying: “submit your ideas below, on ways we can improve” the bill.
He even published a WSJ op-ed which began with this sentence: “intense public scrutiny has helped identify shortcomings and unintended consequences that need to be addressed.”
This was the new tactic: every time someone has a concern, just tell them it will get fixed in committee or on the floor. Consider this question from Sean Hannity: “Are you telling conservatives then to be patient with you? That the bill is not finished and maybe they’ve read too much into it too early?”
But this was another ruse: the Gang of Eight was working together to ensure no real changes were ever made to the bill.
The Washington Post reported: “the eight met in private before each committee hearing, hashing out which amendments they would support and which oppose as a united coalition. Senate aides said amendments were rejected if either side felt they would shatter the deal.” Politico reported: “During the Judiciary Committee markup in May, the Gang routinely met to decide which amendments they would support or oppose. In one meeting, the Senators thought they had all agreed to defeat a proposal from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to require a biometric exit and entry at points of entry before undocumented immigrants could secure green cards, according to one Senate Democratic aide.” A hot mic confirmed it to the whole world: “A hot microphone caught Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) coordinating which way members of the ‘Gang of Eight’ who serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee would vote on immigration bill amendments… ‘Do our Republicans have a pass on this one if they want?’ the microphone caught Schumer saying.” What Schumer was referring to was that the bill — written with special interests like the Chamber of Commerce and La Raza — was to be protected from any amendment that advanced an interest other than those signed off on by these outside groups. The writing of the bill, in many major respects, was outsourced to industry groups.
When the bill came to the floor — before Reid completely shut down the amendment process — Rubio joined the entire Gang of Eight in voting down an amendment to require completion of the entry-exit tracking system and the border fence before the amnesty. Rubio even voted down Chairman Grassley’s amendment to require enforcement first — again, keeping with his private deal to protect the amnesty at all costs.
Reid then shut off all amendments and the Gang of Eight famously filed a new 1,200-page substitute bill — worse than original — and invoked cloture, ending all amendment and ensuring a final vote before anyone could read it. This broke Rubio’s other promise: “Sen. Rubio has said he would not support this legislation if it was rushed through.”
The final product surely was one of the worst bills mashed together in the history of legislation itself.
THE MERIT-BASED MYTH
One of Rubio’s constant selling points for the bill was that it transformed our immigration system from family-based to merit-based. He said this over and over. In many respects, it was one of the biggest deceptions of all. The bill issued approximately 33 million green cards in ten years. At an absolute maximum, under the bill, 2.5 million of those green cards would be issued on a merit basis (the merit-based section covered 120,000-250,000 visas a year). But it gets worse: even within the merit-system, it favors low-skilled and family-based immigrants. For instance: the foreign sibling of a U.S. citizen with no education would receive 10 points; an alien with a bachelor’s degree would receive five points. An alien from a country with low immigration rates to the U.S. with no education would receive the same five points as well.
And it gets worse still — despite making the “merit-based” system one of his central selling points, the bill substantially increased chain migration by allowing for an unlimited number of visas for children and spouses of green card holders (including all illegal aliens given green cards), leaving intact the unlimited visas for the parents of citizens (including for illegals, beginning with adult DREAMers parents, spouses and children in the first 5 years), and clearing the so-called backlog of 5 million immigrants (mostly low-skilled and family-based) with surplus applications to enter the U.S. beyond existing annual limits.
As the liberal Migration Policy Institute explained: “the Senate bill would lift numerical limits and increase the number of permanent visas issued on the basis of nuclear family ties… [and] would dramatically expand options for low- and middle-skilled foreign workers to fill year-round, longer-term jobs and ultimately qualify for permanent residence.” The Center for American Progress crowed that the family-based system would be three times larger than the merit-based system under the new plan (not even counting the amnesty).
Yet Rubio’s office claimed that: “Those given legal status will not be able to use chain migration or anything else to bring family members into the U.S.” This statement defies comprehension. Under current law, illegals cannot legally bring a single relative to the United States. Under Rubio’s plan, they are given green cards and made citizens, guaranteeing them the right to bring relatives to the United States. And the bill goes further, expanding dramatically the way that green card holders — including every single amnestied illegal — can bring their relatives to the United States.
“THE SIZE OF THE FUTURE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES WILL NOT BE IMPACTED”
One of the more extraordinary claims Rubio made was that the immigration bill would not increase (the already-record) rate of immigration into the United States. Rubio’s office put out a fact-check declaring: “the size of the future population of the United States will not be significantly impacted by this legislation.” Nevermind that CBO, Migration Policy Institute, NumbersUSA, Center For Immigration Studies, and Senator Sessions’ office all painstakingly documented the massive immigration increases in the bill.
Under the bill, had it been enacted in 2013, the foreign-born share of the U.S. population would eclipse every known historical record by 2022. The total number of green cards issued would have tripled. Based on CBO data, the foreign-born population from outside the U.S. (not counting illegals inside the U.S. granted amnesty) would have grown 24 million in just a ten-year time frame. To put all that in perspective, during the first full decade of Kennedy’s 1965 immigration law, less than 5 million new immigrants were issued green cards.
But Rubio never discussed any of this openly. Instead he relied on vague euphemisms: saying his goal was “modernizing the legal immigration system to meet America’s 21st-century economic needs for both highly skilled talent and guest workers to fill labor shortages.”
Rubio’s entire career rests on the fact that no one will question his syrupy scripted bites and homeroom-president style rehearsed speeches.
NO WELFARE
To the end, Rubio declared that there would be no welfare allowed to illegals, and this was featured in a prominent ad on TV throughout the debate. For example, Rubio said: “And then they don’t qualify for any federal benefits. This is an important point. No federal benefits, no food stamps, no welfare, no Obamacare.” The rebuttal here is short: every illegal immigrant given a green card gains automatic, guaranteed access to federal welfare, every illegal alien given a work permit gains access to tax credits, and every illegal immigrant made a citizen gains access to everything. In the interim, the bill allows illegals to claim generous state and local benefits (along with federal tax credits). The benefits cost for the amnesty population would run into the trillions.
DECEIVING LAW ENFORCEMENT
Senator Rubio met with corporate interests to craft the Gang of Eight plan but not America’s ICE officers. Eventually, right before the bill was dropped, Rubio finally did meet with the ICE Officers’ President Chris Crane and promised him he would “fix the bill.” But Rubio did no such thing — in fact he made things worse — not better — for ICE, and Crane was livid. The bill would have permanently destroyed immigration enforcement while legalizing dangerous aliens and exposing citizens to a rash of crime that could otherwise be stopped in its tracks. Crane issued a press release which said:
“Senator Rubio, who promised ICE officers and Sheriffs that he would take steps to repair the bill’s provisions that gut interior enforcement, has abandoned that commitment. He directly misled law enforcement officers. Senator Rubio left unchanged legislative provisions that he himself admitted to us in private were detrimental, flawed and must be changed. Legislation written behind closed doors by handpicked special interest groups which put their political agendas and financial gains before sound and effective law and the welfare and safety of the American public. As a result, the 1,200-page substitute bill before the Senate will provide instant legalization and a path to citizenship to gang members and other dangerous criminal aliens, and handcuff ICE officers from enforcing immigration laws in the future.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, the Gang of Eight members on the Judiciary committee killed an amendment that would have stripped the amnesty-for-gang-members provision in the bill — i.e. a simple amendment to deny amnesty to gang members was defeated, ensuring that Rubio’s bill would allow illegal immigrant gang members to become citizens and bring their relatives to join them in the United States.
Rubio, during his time as Florida Speaker, also let a bill die to block sanctuary cities — and Miami is one of the biggest sanctuary cities in the country.
Revealing Rubio’s character, it is also worth recalling that during his introduction press conference, Rubio stood frozen like a statue as ICE officer, council President, and former Marine Chris Crane was removed from the room for trying to ask a question. Shameful. Crane would later testify: “Never before have I seen such contempt for law enforcement officers as I’ve seen from the Gang of Eight.”
AMERICAN WORKERS CAN’T CUT IT
In a for-attribution interview with Ryan Lizza, two senior Rubio staffers expressed frustration that they couldn’t get even more foreign workers crammed into the bill for their boss. They explained: “There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it.”
Rubio’s spokesman — now his campaign spokesman — also compared opponents of amnesty to slaveholders. More on that here.
FIANCÉ VISAS
Rubio’s bill opened the floodgates for fiancé visas — and fiancé children — an unprecedented security risk and another handout to the foreign immigration lobby.
DIFFERENT MESSAGE FOR SPANISH MEDIA
At the same time Rubio was pledging to conservatives his bill was enforcement first, Rubio had a different message in Spanish media. As Byron York reported:
“Let’s be clear,” Rubio said. “Nobody is talking about preventing the legalization. The legalization is going to happen. That means the following will happen: First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border. And then comes the process of permanent residence.”
“As for the legalization, the enormous majority of my colleagues have accepted that it has to happen and that it has to begin at the same time we begin the measures for [the border],” Rubio said. “It is not conditional. The legalization is not conditional.”
Of course, this presentation to Spanish media was accurate: the bill conferred immediate legal status on illegal immigrants that included work authorization, federal benefits, the ability to travel in and out of the country, immunity from deportation the second the bill was passed, and a path to citizenship.
Caught in the contradiction, Rubio had a new explanation for conservatives. Byron York writes again:
“Why is it necessary to legalize the roughly 11 million currently illegal immigrants in the U.S. before newly enhanced border security and internal enforcement measures are in place? Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading Republican on the Senate’s Gang of Eight, says part of the reason is that the federal government can’t afford to secure the border on its own and needs financial help from the immigrants themselves, in the form of fines paid when they are legalized.
“‘We need to register them as soon as possible, not just to keep the problem from getting worse, but we’re going to require them to pay a fine, and that’s the money that we are going to use to pay for the border security,’ Rubio explained. ‘If we don’t get that fine money from the people that have violated our immigration laws, then the American taxpayer is going to have to pay for border security.’”
Then Hannity did another interview. Highlights:
Fox News’ Sean Hannity: “You said in a Univision interview, Senator, that got a lot of play and a lot of anger among conservatives, you said ‘legalization is going to happen. First comes legalization, then comes measures to secure the border.’ Is that the priority? Shouldn’t it be secure the border first?”
Rubio: “Well, first of all, that’s not what the bill does. How the bill works is, permanent residency, which is the ability to stay in the country permanently and one day even apply for citizenship, for that to happen, E-Verify has to happen…”
Hannity: “Can I just get you to maybe reiterate — just because there’s been so much debate about this — you’re saying that you’re pretty confident tomorrow that the border will be secure first, with triggers, before there’s any path to legalization?”
Rubio: “Before there’s any path to permanent residency.”
—
Hannity: “Senator, I think a lot of people were surprised that — in previous interviews that I had with you — you said that you’d secure the border first, but a number of amendments have been voted on that would do just that, a couple yesterday, and you voted against them.”
Rubio: “The reason why Sean, is that I think the proposals need to go even further.”
Yet Rubio’s website still touted (and touts): “The most important thing that happens on day one is that the toughest border security and enforcement plan in American history will be the law of the land. Those who came here illegally after the December 31, 2011 cut-off date will be deported.” (How he was going to get President Obama to deport every illegal who arrived after 2011 was not clear.)
“WHITE HOUSE OFFERS STEALTH CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT IMMIGRATION BILL”
Part of the song and dance show was the White House agreed not to publicly push the bill too loudly while Rubio was trying to sell it to conservative media. Of course, the White House knew they made out like bandits with the bill.
About a week before passage, the NYT ran an article entitled “White House offers stealth campaign to support immigration bill.” What Rubio never told anyone — what to this day he has never been asked about — is that the White House was running the show in the Senate. The NYT explained:
“The hide-out has no sign on the door, but inside Dirksen 201 is a spare suite of offices the White House has transformed into its covert immigration war room on Capitol Hill.
“Strategically located down the hall from the Senate Judiciary Committee in one of the city’s massive Congressional office buildings, the work space normally reserved for the vice president is now the hub of a stealthy legislative operation run by President Obama’s staff. Their goal is to quietly secure passage of the first immigration overhaul in a quarter century.
“‘We are trying hard not to be heavy handed about what we are doing,’ said Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and the president’s point person on immigration.” [and former VP of La Raza]
REFUGEES:
Rubio’s bill included language giving the President unprecedented power to expand refugee resettlement.
IMMIGRATION-FOR-PROFIT:
Rubio’s lawyer who wrote the bill also enriched his clients through it.
RUBIO REVERTS AGAIN TO PASS THE BILL
Having done his best to delay and defer conservative criticism with one misdirection after the other, Rubio returned to his original pitch to pass the now 1,200-page monstrosity — filled with giveaways for the most powerful corporate interests on the planet — declaring once again: “The proposal mandates the most ambitious border and interior security measures in our nation’s history.”
Rubio’s pledges to “fix the bill” — were of course hollow. Again, the Washington Times writes:
“Heading into the debate, Mr. Rubio said he wanted significant changes, including to border security, to the entry-exit system to check visitors’ visas, and to the requirement that newly legalized immigrants show they have learned English before they earn green cards.
“Mr. Rubio called the English-language loophole ‘one of the bill’s shortcomings’ and vowed to fix it, and even wrote an amendment to require immigrants to prove English skills, rather than merely sign up for classes, which under the bill is considered acceptable.
“The Senate never considered that, nor Mr. Rubio’s other amendment to modify eligibility for the Dream Act.
“The Senate also ignored the list of nearly two-dozen changes Mr. Rubio’s office floated ahead of the debate in a three-page document designed to point out potential flaws and solutions to the bill.”
National Review wrote: “It is painful to watch Marco Rubio’s maneuverings on immigration. He is refusing to say whether he will vote “yes” on his own Gang of Eight bill after spending months drafting, defending, and helping shepherd it to the floor. He has supposedly discovered that the enforcement provisions are inadequate, although he has done countless interviews touting that the bill contains the “toughest immigration-enforcement measures in the history of United States” (which is what his website still says). At the same time, Rubio declares the bill 95-96 percent perfect.” Again: National Review has never received an apology for being repeatedly lied to by Rubio.
Of course, in the end, Rubio voted for it, ignoring every prior commitment and promise that he made.
Here is what the head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, representing 12,000 USCIS employees, had to say about the final version of the bill as adopted:
“The amended 1,200-page immigration bill, if passed, will exacerbate USCIS concerns about threats to national security and public safety… It will allow immigrants to break the law in the future and still be eligible for citizenship, as it absolves prospective behavior, not simply past mistakes. It will do away with the applicability of certain grounds of inadmissibility as contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act. It will wipe away the enforcement process that compels law breakers who overstay their visas to return to their home country and restart the immigration process. This bill rewards immigrants who break the law, more so than the prior bill proposed by the Gang of Eight…It was deliberately designed to undermine the integrity of our lawful immigration system. This bill should be opposed and reforms should be offered based on consultation with the USCIS adjudicators who actually have to implement it. Hopefully, lawmakers will read the bill before casting their votes. I say put a cork in it.”
As the ICE Officers’ Council intoned about the final 1,200-page substitute bill:
“[The bill] became a wish list for special interest groups representing and profiting from illegal immigrants. Regretfully, the months of talking points by the Gang of Eight do not accurately reflect the content of this bill… Instead of empowering ICE agents to enforce the law, this legislation empowers political appointees to further violate the law and unilaterally stop enforcement…Far from fixing the bill, the [substitute bill] makes it worse… the 1,200-page substitute bill before the Senate will provide instant legalization and a path to citizenship to gang members and other dangerous criminal aliens, and handcuff ICE officers from enforcing immigration laws in the future…”
Or, as Rich Lowry and Bill Kristol put it in a joint op-ed: “[The Gang of Eight] bill, passed out of the Senate, is a comprehensive mistake. House Republicans should kill it without reservation… House Republicans can do the country a service by putting a stake through its heart.”
BACK TO HIS OLD WAYS
Running for President, Rubio now continues to deliver different messages for different audiences. Asked by Hannity about executive amnesty he said: “absolutely, that would be reversed,” under his presidency. Simple enough, right? Well, not so fast. Here is what he told Jorge Ramos: “DACA is going to have to end at some point. I wouldn’t undo it immediately. The reason is that there are already people who have that permission, who are working, who are studying, and I don’t think it would be fair to cancel it suddenly. But I do think it is going to have to end. And, God willing, it’s going to end because immigration reform is going to pass.” So, Rubio’s message for Spanish media is that an illegal unconstitutional amnesty which provides work permits, tax credits, Social Security and Medicare to illegal immigrants will remain in place until a legislated amnesty takes its place, “God Willing.” So the voters don’t get a say: they’ve defeated the DREAM Act legislation over and again, but Rubio is saying: you only get two choices, an unconstitutional executive amnesty for DREAMers or you can make them citizens under the DREAM Act. President Obama says the same thing.
And what about border security first? Another continuing lie. Breitbart writes: “The chief spokesman for the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in an on-record interview with Breitbart News that the senator, if elected president, would not require a secured border before he gives legislative and permanent amnesty to recipients of President Barack Obama’s first executive amnesty, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program… ‘I mean when we were working on the 2012 bill, that was independent of the border,’ Conant said. ‘These are the kids that already — I mean, the kids are in a very unique situation because they didn’t willingly break the law.’”
Rubio continues to talk about modernizing our immigration system to make it “merit-based” without ever being called out on the fact that his idea of merit-based is 30 million green cards to mostly low-skilled foreign workers. And, he is the lead sponsor of legislation to triple H-1Bs and have functionally unlimited foreign hiring through universities — which translates to a huge green card increase sold to foreign nationals by college and universities with no accountability. And, just like his old Gang of Eight days, he’s pretending his foreign worker surge (of course he never admits it’s that, but uses the same misleading language as always) would help workers while his new bill — a legislative creature developed by technology tycoons for their benefit — would destroy them. The public vehemently repudiates a foreign worker surge, perhaps why Senator Rubio doesn’t mention that’s what his plan does.
Rubio also refuses to say whether he’d sign his own Gang of Eight bill into law if he were President (since, after all, he loses McCain’s 2010 Senate Campaign “trust” argument if he, not Obama, is President).
Rubio is also the only candidate in the race still advocating citizenship for all illegal immigrants, and all that necessarily entails in terms of fiscal costs and chain migration. (Jeb’s book did not call for universal citizenship, like Rubio.) To this day, Rubio has not backed off a single policy in the Gang of Eight bill (see more here).
Rubio has also backed the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States and OPPOSED efforts by conservatives to strip funding for refugees. And his new I-Squared bill — backed by his top tech donors like Larry Ellison — would massively expand Muslim immigration without limit. He has also called Muslim immigration a constitutional right.
Perhaps the single most telling fact is who reportedly joined Rubio’s campaign team as staff or advisor: the exact same team that brought you the Gang of Eight bill: the same attorney who wrote it (Enrique Gonzalez), the same communications staffers who sold it, the same Senate Chief of Staff who helped dream it all up (Cesar Conda) and, most importantly, the campaign strategist more associated with mass immigration than any consultant in America (Whit Ayres).
The open-borders donors, like Paul Singer, know exactly what they are buying with Senator Rubio. They are in on the con, and their mark is America.
CONCLUSION
There is no single major distinguishing policy difference between Marco Rubio, John McCain or Lindsey Graham. They have the same trade policy, immigration policy and foreign policy. But on immigration most especially — the issue in which all four have invested the most — there is no daylight separating them.
The difference, then, is one of persona, not policy. And in the arena of immigration, this translates into a vital difference. The biggest change from McCain-Kennedy, which could not get out of the Senate, and the Gang of Eight — which was nursed along by conservative pundits despite being to the left of Kennedy’s bill — was the presence of Rubio. Rubio created the conditions necessary to produce a considerably more open borders bill: conservatives who were invested in the Rubio Brand provided no early pushback but accepted Kennedy’s old talking points, and Rubio gave red state Democrats the political space necessary to support it. This is how it got 68 votes in the Senate.
The stakes of course are raised considerably if Rubio is President or Vice President. Rubio would have a much, much better chance than Obama of getting an open borders bill through Congress — while Boehner could refuse to bring up Obama’s mass immigration/amnesty bill for vote in 2014, Ryan would never refuse Rubio’s bill. Rubio’s presence, as it did with the Gang of Eight, would create the cover for both certain Republicans and all Democrats to get behind a far more open borders plan. Given that nearly every House Democrat sponsored the Gang of Eight House version (including Pelosi and Gutierrez), Ryan would not need to gather that many additional votes (House GOP leaders might have refused Obama’s 2014 request for a vote but they would not refuse President Rubio’s).
All of which adds up to: there is likely no person in the United States of America in a better position to enact mass immigration legislation than a President Rubio — no one who could deliver more votes in both parties for open borders immigration. Senator Rubio is not Main Street’s Obama, he is Wall Street’s Obama: President Obama was a hardcore leftist running as centrist; Senator Rubio is a Wall Street globalist running as a tea party conservative.
Unlike other legislation, the effects of bad immigration policy cannot be repealed. They are forever. The Republican party would never nominate a pro-Obamacare candidate, and it must be an even stronger maxim that it should not nominate any candidate who is committed to a policy of mass immigration. Rubio wrote the Obamacare of immigration policies: a bill that would have eviscerated the middle class, plunged millions into poverty, legalized the most dangerous aliens on the planet, overwhelmed our schools and safety nets, and done irreversible violence to the idea of America as a nation-state. Rubio is the candidate of open borders, Obamatrade and mass immigration, making one last attempt to pull off one big con.