Rubio, Marco - Positions on immigration policy
Rubio’s campaign website is at https://marcorubio.com/. It contains a section on Immigration Issues at: https://marcorubio.com/issues-2/marco-rubio-immigration-plan-border-secu.... The section is titled “Secure the border first” and is excerpted from his 2015 book, American Dreams.
Some quotes from the discussion posted on his website:
“Each year our colleges and universities graduate foreign students who are among the best and the brightest in the whole world. Instead of putting them to work here, innovating products and creating jobs, we send them back to China and India to compete against us. This makes no sense.”
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“The only way we are going to be able to break this impasse [difficulty in passing immigration reform] and make progress on this issue is in a sequential and piecemeal way, with a series of bills that build upon one another until ultimately we have put in place the kind of immigration system our nation needs.
The first step must be enforcement measures that are effective and verifiable. Such measures would include securing the most vulnerable and most trafficked sectors of the southern border, mandatory E-Verify and the full implementation of an entry-exit tracking system.”
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“In the end, immigration reform is fundamentally about reforming government and restoring the American people’s faith in the ability of their government to do basic things right. I don’t believe this challenge will be fully met until we have new leaders in Washington who support both the rule of law and the job-creating potential of the free market. Until then, the best way to rebuild trust and reform our broken immigration system is through incremental steps both to fix our immigration system and to realize the full potential of our country.”
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This campaign ad of January 2016 is also posted on his website:
https://marcorubio.com/news/marco-rubio-ad-no-amnesty/. In it he says:
“When I’m president, there will be no amnesty. I’ll cancel Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders; cut sanctuary city funding; and deport criminal aliens. We’ll add 20,000 border agents; finish all 700 miles of border wall; and if we aren’t 100 percent sure who you are and why you’re coming to America, you’re not getting in.”
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The following references are selected from NumbersUSA’s website on presidential candidates. NumbersUSA grades candidates based on their voting records and public statements on immigration. Marco Rubio is graded D as of January 14, 2016.
View the complete report at: https://www.numbersusa.com/content/elections/races/presidential/marco-ru....
In his Iowa State Fair speech in August 2015, Sen. Rubio said he did not agree with Trump's plan or ending birthright citizenship. "I'm open to doing things that prevent people who deliberately come to the U.S. for purposes of taking advantage of the 14th Amendment, but I'm not in favor of repealing it," he stated.
Sen. Rubio was a main sponsor and driving force of the Gang of Eight's amnesty legislation and is supportive of giving work permits to illegal aliens. However, he does support securing the border prior to the granting of work permits. Sen. Rubio also backtracked on the 2015 DHS budget bill, urging the Senate to pass legislation even if it funds President Obama's illegal amnesties. Rubio said on February 27, 2015, "What I’ve learned is that you can’t even have a conversation about that until people believe [that future illegal immigration will be controlled]." Source: http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/02/27/marco-rubio-hillary-is-yesterday/
In an April 2015 Univision interview Sen. Rubio said he would wait to repeal Obama’s amnesty executive actions. “DACA…applies to young people that arrived in this country at a very young age before they were adults and I don’t think we can immediately revoke that… I’m not calling for it to be revoked tomorrow, or this week, or right away…I think it will have to end at some point and I hope it will end because of some reform to the immigration laws,” Rubio said. Source: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/02/marco-rubio-jorge-ram...
Sen. Rubio told the Marietta Journal on May 15, 2015, that "we have to reasonably deal with the fact that there are 10, 11 million people who have been in this country longer than a decade. They will be here for the rest of their lives, legally or illegally. It behooves the country to know who they are, figure out a way for them to be start paying taxes, pay a fine, learn English and be able to live in the country in a legal status that allows for us to account for that so long as we can ensure that this is never going to happen again. But that issue has to eventually be dealt with. Leaving it the way it is is not good for the country.....I've described a process whereby people who meet a certain criteria, meaning they've been in this country a decade or longer, would have to come forward. They would have to pass a background check, and you can make that background test as strict or as lenient as you want. I believe that it needs to be stricter and not more lenient. They'll have to pay a fine as a consequence of violating the laws. They'll have to learn English and they'll have to start paying taxes. In exchange for all that, the only thing they would get is a work permit, and that's all they would have for at least a decade or longer, and then at some point after that period of time has expired, the only thing they would be allowed to do is apply for a green card. They would have to do it just like anybody else would, including people who are here legally or people that are abroad. And that would also take a significant period of time. Some people argue that all they should ever be allowed to have is a work permit. If that's the best we can do, I could support a proposal like that."
Speaking in New Hampshire in July 2015, Sen. Rubio continued to say that he supports amnesty. When asked if he supports a path to citizenship, he said "I do." Then, he said, Americans will be “very generous but responsible.” He would require a background check, paying a fine, paying taxes and receiving legal status; after “at least a decade,” they could apply for permanent residency, and several years thereafter apply for citizenship.
We can find no quotes from Sen. Rubio acknowledging the impacts immigration has on American workers. Rubio was a main sponsor of the Gang of 8 amnesty bill that would have drastically increased foreign worker numbers and his new immigration plan includes increases in worker visas, particularly visas for highly-skilled workers.
