Sen. Marco Rubio has promised not to walk away from the Senate’s immigration plan, ending speculation that he would abandon the bill that would legalize roughly 30 million immigrants and provide work permits to roughly 13 million guest-workers.
“I’m working as hard today on immigration reform as I ever have,” Rubio told his home-state newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel. “That’s what I’m committed to trying to accomplish, and that’s what I’m spending all of my time on, figuring out how we can get a bill that passes the Senate and serves as a starting point to get it passed in the House as well.
“I won’t abandon this issue until it’s done, until we get a bill passed,” he said, despite criticism from GOP advocates and opposition from the GOP’s base.
Rubio’s June 6 statement to the Orlando Sentinel follows a series of high-profile statements by Rubio, in which he suggested he could stop supporting the bill unless it was improved.
“He was never going to walk away from the bill,” said Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which wants to reduce current immigration rates.
Rubio’s equivocations, he said, were “a game … to make him seem more conservative, to make it seem that he extracted concessions from the Democrats, when it has all been scripted out ahead of time.”
Some immigration reform advocates had hoped Rubio would follow through on his threats to quit the so-called “Gang of Eight” if the bill did not provide better border security and some protections for American blue-collar and white-collar workers.
The border security provisions of the bill are what need further strengthening, Rubio said.
“If we get border security right, we will pass immigration reform,” Rubio said. “All that needs to happen is a serious and real border-security measure and ensuring that public benefits aren’t being spent at the expense of American taxpayers.”
Between 2007 and 2012, employers hired 78,802 graduate-level guest-workers for Florida jobs, including graphic designers, pharmacists, doctors and professors. Also, 3,226 Florida employers hired many more lower-skilled workers for work in restaurants, hotels and resorts. In addition, roughly 1 million people immigrate to the United States each year.
The pending bill will increase the inflow.
The pending bill is backed by President Barack Obama, Democratic leaders and advocacy groups, any many business groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce.
Passage of the bill would be a “historic achievement,” Obama said.
Prior to his 2010 election, Rubio opposed numerous measures in the Florida legislature that are supported by GOP-leaning reformers.