Bloomberg
By Sahil Kapur
June 4, 2015
When
Jeb Bush subtly swiped his Republican rivals for a tendency to "bend
with the wind," as leaked to the Washington Post last week, a likely
target was Senator Marco
Rubio, his protégé-turned-rival, who abandoned his 2013 immigration
bill under pressure from conservatives. On Sunday, Bush insisted he's
"not going to back down on [his] views on immigration."
The
two Floridians are the most pro-immigration Republicans polling in the
top tier of the presidential field—both have endorsed "legal status" for
undocumented immigrants,
a view many conservatives decry as "amnesty." But pro-immigration
activists seem to prefer the ex-governor to the senator, though they're
less than thrilled with either of them.
"Jeb
Bush has a pretty strong record as an immigration reformer," said Frank
Sharry, the executive director of the pro-immigration group America's
Voice. At the end of
the day Bush "gets the benefit of the doubt on comprehensive reform in a
way that Rubio does not," he said.
“Jeb Bush has a pretty strong record as an immigration reformer.”
Frank Sharry, executive director America's Voice
Why?
"Yes,
technically Rubio is still for a path to citizenship. But his new 'step
by step' approach will never result in a path to citizenship—and he
knows it," Sharry said,
calling Rubio's rhetoric "code for inaction" and lambasting him for
having "betrayed and abandoned the cause when it was politically
expedient for him to do so."
Unlike
the comprehensive approach under his Senate bill, which passed 68-32
and died in the House, Rubio now supports a "sequential and piecemeal"
approach, writing in
his 2015 book American Dreams that his work on the issue taught him
that "achieving comprehensive reform of anything in a single bill is
simply not realistic."
His
three-step plan says Congress must pass stricter border security and
reform legal immigration before addressing the undocumented population.
His final step offers
them legal status without a guarantee of citizenship, but with the
option to apply for it through regular channels after a long transition
period, Rubio's campaign said.
For
immigration advocates, Rubio's rhetoric is distressingly familiar.
They've heard Speaker John Boehner and House Republican leaders promise
"step-by-step" reforms for
two years and refuse to act amidst the same opposition from the right
that preceded Rubio's change of heart.
"It's
a false start to this conversation," Clarissa Martínez-De-Castro, the
deputy vice president of National Council of La Raza, said of Rubio's
border-security-first
rhetoric. She pointed out that illegal immigration is at its lowest
level in more than a decade and that in recent years "the only thing
that has continued to ratchet up is enforcement. .. So that notion is
ludicrous. It's a knee-jerk reaction."
Bush
supports a comprehensive approach that deals with border security,
legal immigration and gives undocumented immigrants a path to legal
status—a status that can never
lead to citizenship, his political action committee said.
"I'm
for a path to legalized status, where people get a provisional work
permit," Bush said Sunday on CBS' Face The Nation, after they've met
certain criteria such as
paying taxes and a fine and learning English. "They don't earn citizenship."
A
Bush aide pointed to the ex-governor's 2013 book Immigration Wars, in
which he insisted that the legal status in that context "should not lead
to citizenship." He wrote:
"It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that
actions have consequences—in this case, that those who violated the
laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship."
Immigration advocates don't like that part of Bush's plan.
"Anything
that prevents citizenship would go against what has worked in American
immigration for more than 200 years of our history. A prohibition would
be stupid," Representative
Luis Gutiérrez, an outspoken pro-reform Illinois Democrat, told
Bloomberg in a statement. "We should leave the citizenship lane open for
those who qualify and encourage citizenship as much as possible."
Immigration
advocates worry that such an approach would create a permanent
under-class. The constituency for it is narrow—a 2013 Quinnipiac poll
found that just 10 percent
of registered American voters favor legal status without the
possibility of citizenship; 56 percent support allowing undocumented
immigrants to eventually become citizens. (Another 30 percent want them
to leave the country.)
Regardless,
these advocates prefer Bush's comprehensive approach. The procedural
question is very important to them because few see any possibility of
success under a
piecemeal approach like Rubio has advocated, as the fragile coalition
would likely shatter without a proposal that satisfies each of their
prerogatives. Despite a push by Boehner in 2014, House Republicans never
mustered the support to advance piecemeal immigration
reforms.
"On
the politics side, any one of these pieces that you want to try to move
forward will meet the same intensity and opposition. The way to
overcome that opposition is
to unite as many people as you can and muster a pro-reform
[coalition]," Martínez-De-Castro said.
The
issue looms large in the 2016 election as many Hispanics—a growing
constituency that provides critical votes in swing states like Florida,
Colorado and Nevada—see
immigration as a gateway issue when considering whether to support a
candidate. Many Republican strategists believe the party must grow its
share of the Latino vote to win future presidential elections.
"We need immigration reform, for cryin' out loud," Bush said Tuesday at a Republican economic summit in Orlando.
Winning
Hispanics in a general election will be difficult for either Bush or
Rubio. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has made an aggressive
pitch by calling for
comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship and
proposing to expand President Barack Obama's executive actions to defer
the deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants. (Republicans,
including Bush and Rubio, want to overturn those actions.)
"[Clinton] has set the bar for other candidates," Martínez-De-Castro said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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