Bloomberg
By Arit John
April 15, 2015
Marco
Rubio is now at the point in his post-announcement media blitz when
he's answering questions about previous post-announcement interviews.
During an appearance on
Fox News' "The Kelly File" on Tuesday, host Megyn Kelly asked the
Florida Republican about his comment to NPR's "Morning Edition" that
he's "done more on on immigration than Hillary Clinton ever did." Kelly
argued that might not endear him to the conservative
voters who didn't like the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill.
"My
broader point," he said, "was, in terms of using immigration against us
in a general election, I don't think they're going to be able to use
that against us successfully."
Some
Hispanic outreach and advocacy groups would tend to agree with him. For
groups on the right in particular, Rubio's high profile role in helping
usher the reform bill
through the Senate outweighs his later pivot towards piecemeal reform
and emphasizing the need for border security as the bill languished in
the House. For them, it was more of a reassessment than a flip flop.
“I would not use the words ‘back up.’”
Adryana Boyne, VOCES Action
"I
would not use the words 'back up,'" Adryana Boyne, the national
director of the conservative Hispanic outreach group VOCES Action, said
in an interview. "I would say
that he saw the reaction and listened to constituents and Americans who
were reluctant to have comprehensive immigration reform."
At
the LIBRE Initiative, a conservative, Koch-backed, anti-Obamacare
group, executive director Daniel Garza said that Rubio is still for
everything that was in the reform
bill. "But where he changed was he no longer trusted this president to
execute and abide by what the Congress would approve in legislation," he
said. "I guess what he’s saying is 'I trust myself to execute
immigration policy—not Barack Obama.'"
The
argument that Rubio has done more than Clinton on immigration also
holds weight for Hispanic activists. On the right, that's largely thanks
to a general sense that
Clinton has no accomplishments. “I not only agree with that, I would
add to that: Can someone mention one single issue that Mrs. Clinton has
done in the last 25 years? Because nothing comes to my mind,” Boyne said
of Rubio’s Clinton remarks.
But
the idea that Clinton will have to earn credibility on immigration has
traction on the left as well. Brent Wilkes, the national executive
director of the League of
United Latin American Citizens—a Hispanic civil rights group that
supports issues like Obamacare, the Medicaid expansion, and Common
Core—said that left-leaning immigration activists who argue that Rubio
turned his back on immigrants should point out that
President Bill Clinton signed off on “some of the worst anti-immigrant
legislation in a generation,” including the 1996 Illegal Immigration
Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act.
“To
try to compare and contrast Rubio’s record with Hillary Clinton on the
immigration question and pretend that Hillary’s going to win that fight
outright, I think, is
a mistake,” Wilkes said.
President
Bill Clinton passed three Republican-backed immigration bills that,
among other things, made it easier to deport people for small crimes
committed in their youths
and harder for spouses to get green cards. Lynn Tramonte at America’s
Voice, a pro-immigration reform group that supported the 2013 reform
bill, called the period the “Dark Ages” of the immigration reform
debate. “The politics of immigration have completely
changed since the mid-1990s,” she said.
As
for the Clinton who is still eligible to run for office, Tramonte said
that she has a good voting record on immigration—she supported
comprehensive immigration reform
and the DREAM Act during her time in the Senate—but she also hasn’t
been vocal about "whether she understands that leaning into immigration
reform [is] the right way forward for her candidacy ... I think she
will, but it’s still an open question."
Clinton
has had a bumpy history on immigration questions, most memorably on
whether undocumented immigrants should receive drivers licenses. In June
2014 she said the
large numbers of unaccompanied child migrants entering the country
illegally over the summer "should be sent back." During the 2014 midterm
election season Clinton was confronted by DREAMers, beneficiaries of
Obama’s immigration executive order for children
brought into the U.S. illegally, about her stance on the president’s
executive orders. During another confrontation she said the country
needs to "elect more Democrats." She later tweeted in favor of DAPA, the
immigration executive order Obama proposed in
2014 to address the immigrant parents of lawful U.S. citizens and
permanent residents:
While
Tramonte wasn't certain what Clinton planned to do on immigration as
president, she was convinced that Rubio won't back a comprehensive bill
and he won't support
Obama's positions on immigration orders, despite their overwhelming
popularity with Hispanics. Rubio has said he would eventually phase out
DACA, the executive order for people brought into the country illegally
as children, if he were president.
"He’s
afraid of that issue in a way that shows a real lack of leadership and
pandering to the lowest common denominator in his party,” she said.
"[Clinton] still has to
say a lot more about where she stands and what she’ll do as president,
but Rubio has been pretty clear about where he stands and what he won’t
do."
Rubio
is also becoming clear about how he will shape his role in immigration
reform—his biggest weakness, but also the closest he's come to having a
major legislative
accomplishment in the Senate. At the very least, he's shown that he's
the lesser of 16 evils when it comes to immigration reform.
"At
some point you can’t just buck the party entirely," Wilkes said. "But I
think Rubio did enough to warrant praise and to understand that, if he
was the commander in
chief, he’s going to approach the immigration question with a lot more
compassion and understanding than most of his colleagues."
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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