Why Doesn't Anyone With a Microphone or a News Platform Find Out Exactly What Marco Rubio's Current Immigration Position Actually Is?

Marco Rubio likes to keep things vague. I notice his establishment media boosters like letting him stay vague on this point.

Stanley Kurtz asks what Rubio's actual current policy is. Shouldn't we know that? And shouldn't we know if it's a real policy or just something he's claiming to get him to the general election?

Immigration... is too important an issue to leave so ambiguous. Unless and until Rubio satisfies conservative voters that he now rejects the most egregious provisions of the Gang of Eight bill--and not simply the order in which those provisions kick in--Sen. Cruz will rightly have an opening for attack.

I have my theories about why we don't know, about why there's so little scrutiny of Rubio on the One Big Issue holding him back.

You know, I floated the idea that I could get behind Rubio if he made one promise: that he would not attempt any sort of legalization until after he had worked dilligently to secure the border for three years. If, after doing that, he wants to propose legalization in an election year, I figure either he'll have sealed the border, and thus it's politically viable to try for legalization, in which case I'd be okay with it, or he wouldn't have sealed the border, and thus it's politically disastrous to propose legalization, which I'd be okay with as well.

I figure, if Rubio's actually kept his commitment to border security, then I wouldn't mind having a political discussion on some kind of legalization.

I just don't want him to try that, as he tried with Gang of Eight, before actually doing anything on the security and enforcement front.

No one else troubled themselves to ask Rubio about this. Rubio, for his part, did not respond himself. Mostly people shouted at me for daring to ask Rubio for such a thing.

Does no one ask such an obvious question, or ask for such an useful promise, because they know damn well what Rubio intends to do and don't want to corner him on the point?

I also posted Rubio's Univision interview transcripts. Patterico wrote about some other cases of dissembling in those transcripts.

The establishment media has been Dead Radio Silent about that.

Almost as if they just don't want people to know about it.

Note that Kurtz's piece is in NRO, so I'm not saying they're embargoing this.

National Review also publishes this piece by John Fonte, on Rubio's prior history on immigration.

It's pretty damning. You might have forgotten much of this, or maybe never knew.

For example, this was Rubio's big roll-out after his Gang of Eight on amnesty failed:

Senator Rubio is now a member of the Gang of Six, the sponsors of the Immigration Innovation Act of 2015 (known as I-Squared), which would double the number of H-1B "guest worker" visas for low-wage foreign tech workers, give work permits to their spouses and some categories of foreign students, and increase permanent immigration. Thus, despite Rubio's constant rhetorical drumbeat about how border and interior enforcement must be dealt with before other immigration measures are considered, his first post–Gang of Eight legislative proposal is not related to enforcement but, instead, advocates more "guest workers" and expanding permanent immigration.

The I-Squared bill is being promoted by the same group of big-business lobbyists and high-tech moguls who poured money into the 2013 bill. The tech industry claims there is a "shortage" of American IT workers. But in a Senate hearing, leading academic experts have refuted this thesis. Professor Ron Hira of Howard University declared that “there is an ample supply of American workers . . . who are willing and qualified to fill high-skilled jobs in this country." Hira continued, "Most of the H-1B program is now being used to import cheaper foreign guest workers, replacing American workers and undercutting their wages."

Is Rubio really "electable"? Note the sidebar piece: For Romney to have won in 2012, he would have had to increase his Hispanic voteshare from 27% to 50%, or his white voteshare from 56% to 59%.

Three little points.

I don't believe Rubio would do gangbusters with Hispanics. I think he'd pull like 36%. Too many Hispanics are simply Democrats -- even if you adopt the Democrats' position on amnesty, they still favor the Democrats on all other issues, including, increasingly, social issues.

Yet, meanwhile, he also continues to scheme with Mark Zuckerberg to put more American citizens out of work by importing in cheaper foreign workers.

That doesn't seem likely to increase the white voteshare; in fact, it seems likely to depress it.

Does the GOP really want to become the party that deliberately, zealously undermines American workers' job salaries and job securities at every opportunity?

Apparently, they do.

The GOP Mandarins are not pushing open borders because it's politically popular -- it's not. They're pushing it because a very influential and well-heeled bloc within the establishment wants it for reasons having nothing to do with politics, or justice.

David Frum's Aesop parable about the boy who can't get his hand out of the nut-jar, because he's greedily grabbed too many nuts and won't let a single one go, becomes more brightly piercing by the day.

They've got their heels dug in, and they're not giving an inch to you Racists.

Who's the real No Compromise wing of the GOP? The Establishment is -- but only when they're dealing with other Republicans, those who have the gall and cheek to challenge them.

Don't buy the hype. Rubio is not a viable candidate.

Choose Cruz. (Fonte's piece notes that Cruz was a very important actor in defeating the Gang of Eight -- not just via the legislative poison pill, but by publicizing the defects of it on talk radio.)

posted by Ace at 11:05 AM

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