Politico (Article by Manu Raju): For Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the DREAM is over for now.
President Barack Obama’s move to allow some children of illegal immigrants to remain in the United States appears to have sunk Rubio’s effort to push forward a Republican version of the so-called DREAM Act before the November elections.
“Frankly, the president’s executive action takes a lot of momentum out of Sen. Rubio’s push for a consensus, legislative solution,” Alex Conant, a Rubio spokesman, said Monday. “The president’s action undermines the urgency to pass something before the election — a hard enough prospect even without the newly inflamed politics surrounding the issue.”
The bill would have been a tall order in the polarized Congress and with members of both parties skeptical about the effort. But it was highly anticipated because Rubio is widely believed to be a top prospect for running mate to Mitt Romney. And it could have been used by the GOP to chip away at the Democrats’ polling advantage with Latino voters.
At the same time, the bill could have sparked an intra-party fight among Republicans who decry such proposals as “amnesty” for lawbreakers and those who want to find a middle ground on an emotional issue of major significance to the Latino community. It promised to put Romney in an awkward spot after the hard line he took on immigration during the GOP primary.
Rubio was in intense discussions with senior Republicans, such as Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl and Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, in the hopes of introducing a bill to legalize undocumented children brought to the United States at an early age provided they have no criminal record and have completed high school. It would have granted them “non-immigrant” visas, allowing them to stay in the country and access the existing immigration system, through which they could eventually become green card holders or naturalized citizens.
But Rubio had not introduced legislation, only speaking in broad terms about the plan and engaging in early discussions with the Congressional Budget Office about its scope.
It also amounts to a setback to Rubio as he tries to build a legislative resume.
On Monday, Kyl said he didn’t know if the president’s announcement would derail the effort altogether.
“He and I agree that certainly prior to the president’s action, it was fraught with politics, and it probably is afterward as well,” Kyl told reporters just off the Senate floor. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about whether or not it would be better to put a good long-term policy in place than just to rely on the president deciding not to enforce the law.”
Democrats were signaling that they weren’t ready to jump in line behind Rubio. Instead, many top Democrats said Rubio had to first demonstrate he could win significant GOP support for the proposal before they’d entertain negotiations on a compromise plan.
The Democrats’ more far-reaching DREAM Act — which failed to overcome Republican opposition in a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 — would provide a direct pathway to citizenship by providing green cards to children seeking higher education or military service of at least two years. They also must have come to the U.S. before age 16, be under age 30, have lived in the country for five years, pass a criminal background test and have earned a high school diploma or GED. Beneficiaries could apply for citizenship after six years.
But Obama circumvented Congress altogether on Friday, making an executive decision saying that those who entered the United States before the age of 16, are younger than 30 and pose no security threat, served in the military and completed minimum levels of education can get a two-year deferral from deportation and apply for work permits.
“Sen. Rubio was working hard to find a permanent solution to this issue, meeting with Republican senators and DREAM kid activists earlier last week,” Conant said. “And we were not briefed — let alone consulted — before the administration made his announcement.”
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