As I have said on several previous occasions, I have become more than a little disappointed in my junior senator from here in Florida, Marco Rubio. I had some pretty high hopes for him when I marched off to the polls back on 2010 to proudly cast my vote for him and even before that, when I cheerfully wrote a hefty check, by my standards, to his campaign. Those once high hopes have, sadly, pretty much evaporated. I feel like, maybe, I was led on, and told what it was thought I needed to hear before offering my support. That’s not likely to happen again.
So now with the Senate Judiciary Committee having approved the controversial ‘Gang of Eight’ immigration reform bill, by a vote of 13-5, it now moves on to the full Senate. And arguably the most instrumental supporter and spokesman of the bill has been my senator, Marco Rubio. And it’s fair to say that that support has come at a price, with many of his ardent supporters deserting him, with some even going so far as to state that they will no longer support him at all because of his backing an immigration bill they feel is simply "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.
Rubio, quite stubbornly, will contend that his bill is not "amnesty" and that he never has or would support a blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants. Rubio has gone as far as to call the current immigration system "de facto amnesty." But there are many conservative critics, of which I am one, who disagree with him on that point and believe that the bill itself is tantamount to "de facto amnesty" regardless of how tough the border security and enforcement measures text reads in the bill. We’ve heard it all before. To use Barry’s phrase, there’s no there, there.
While the other co-authors of the bipartisan immigration reform bill do not have nearly as much to lose as Rubio, should this bill ultimately fail in any number of regards, Rubio has everything to lose. And has actually lost much already. Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have picked apart the provisions of the proposed legislation, and Sessions has pointed out the fact that the bill would indeed grant federal benefits for illegal immigrants who become eligible to legally work in the U.S. if the bill were to become law.
"One of the things we identified a year or two ago was that large numbers of [illegal immigrants] have become eligible immediately for the earned income tax credit. The average person who qualifies for earned income tax credits gets about $2,000 a year… It’s actually a direct check from the United States government…
EITC is generally available to anyone that has a Social Security number… As these [registered provisional immigrants] are all established and get a Social Security number, they will qualify, it appears under the law, for earned income tax credit. I’m not sure the sponsors understood that, because they’ve insisted that RPI aliens will not receive any federal benefits under the bill. But [their legislation] would grant such benefits to millions and be a substantial burden on our country’s finances…" Senator Jeff Sessions
Rubio has aggressively tried to dispel this very notion that federal benefits would be granted to illegal immigrants while they are allowed to legally reside and work in the country. With other conservative Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls paying close attention to the outcome of this immigration bill, Rubio’s potential presidential candidacy could hinge on whether or not he heeds the advice of many prominent conservatives who are urging him to withdraw his support of the bill. I truly do hope that he will come to his political senses.
Other members of the U.S. Senate such as Chuck Grassley, remember voting for a similar "amnesty" bill back in 1986, and according to CBS, Grassley said that the 1986 bill, like Rubio’s bill, "promised to crack down on illegal immigration, but said that it had failed to do so." So what makes us all so sure that we want to head down that very same road yet again, Rubio or no Rubio? Ya know, and something else makes me in no big hurry to support this thing. The Democrats want it way too much! And that always makes me very nervous.
It is hard to grasp that a single ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’ vote on a Senate bill could tremendously impact the political career of one of the most likeable politicians in recent history, but the sober truth for Rubio is that it very likely will. For better or worse, Rubio’s vote will cast him as either a supporter of amnesty for illegal immigrants or as a leader who tried to do the right thing for the country but was forced to drop his support for a bill that became too flawed to support. So, Senator Marco Rubio’s decision point has now arrived. Do I hear a distant drum roll?
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