Marco Rubio fundraising at Larry Ellison’s: Will they talk immigration?

San Francisco Chronicle

By Carla Marinucci

June 8, 2015

Marco Rubio fundraising at Larry Ellison’s: Will they talk immigration? 

Florida Senator Marco Rubio is making the money rounds in Silicon Valley Tuesday, starring at a $2,700-per-person fundraiser in the palatial Woodside home of Oracle guru Larry Ellison.

While it’s being touted as proof that Rubio “has another billionaire in his corner,” as Politico put it, the visit raises the question: is Rubio really simpatico with Valley interests, and with his host today, on the issue that Ellison and other top tech execs care deeply about — immigration reform?

Oracle’s top dogs have repeatedly made clear they’re big backers of comprehensive immigration reform. The firm’s president and CEO, Safra Catz was among the 100 top executives in Silicon Valley in the TechNet advocacy group who called upon President Obama to back the Senate bill and push for more high-skilled immigration visas back in 2013.

The firm donated $2,500 to Rubio (and others in the so-called “Gang of Eight” legislators who backed immigration changes) shortly before his immigration bill passed the Senate. That legislation included provisions for more H1B visas, the kind Silicon Valley prizes for high skilled engineers and programmers. Oracle Corp. in 2013 pushed hard for on its own for an expansion of the H1B visa cap.

On a national ID card, Ellison himself wrote a 2001 Wall Street Journal op-ed endorsing the idea. Rubio voted to support it.

But lately, Rubio himself has appeared to distance himself from the bill.

In an April interview with CBS’s Bob Schieffer, the Florida senator — asked if he’d sign his own bill if he became president — totally sidestepped the question. “That’s a hypothetical that will never happen,” he told Schieffer.

A Bloomberg story this week reported that GOP insiders backing immigration reform, and pro-immigration advocates like Frank Sharry of immigration reform group America’s Voice, are increasingly skeptical about Rubio’s commitment to reform. Some GOPers, they say, view Jeb Bush as the better option there.

From Bloomberg:

“Technically 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.

Question today, as Rubio hits Woodside: While he’s picking up the checks, will he have a real heart-to-heart with Larry on Silicon Valley and immigration reform?

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com