Senator Rubio's Impassioned Call for Compromise on Immigration

Florida Senator Marco Rubio addressed the Hispanic leaders conference (NALEO) this afternoon before President Obama appeared on the same podium.
Senator Rubio last week saw his effort to organize a comprehensive immigration bill pushed into limbo by the President’s temporary Executive Order solution to let about 1 million young illegal immigrants stay for two years if they meet certain condition.
Obama’s solution is no solution at all, really, just an election year attempt to curry favor with the Hispanic vote.
Rubio told it like it is today and he had unkind words for both Democrats and Republicans.
“I don’t care who gets the credit,” Rubio, a possible Mitt Romney running mate, told 1,000 Hispanic leaders at the annual NALEO conference. “I don’t. But it exposes the fact that this issue is all about politics for some people. Not just Democrats, Republicans too.”
Responding to complaints that he had taken too long to introduce his bill, Rubio said, “I wasn’t looking to influence the election in November,” he said. “I was looking to help these kids that I’ve met. These aren’t kids I’ve read about in the newspaper, these are people that I have met, who came here when they were five, who didn’t even know they were undocumented until they applied to go to college.”
Senator Rubio offered the American electoral season something we have not seen until today - passion about his subject and interest in actually doing something worthy of Congress instead of looking for points to put into a negative campaign ad.
“I was tempted to come here today and rip open the policies of the administration,” Rubio said. “I know in a few moments you’ll hear from the president. I was tempted to come here and tell you, hey, he hasn’t been here in three years. What a coincidence; it’s an election year. I was tempted to tell you, why didn’t he make this issue a priority?”
Some in the responded with applause; others gave a few jeers.
“I guess I just did tell you,” Rubio continued. “But that’s not the direction I want to go in my speech.”
Of his own scaled-back DREAM Act effort, Rubio argued, “I proposed some specific ideas and I publicly talked about it; the reaction from many on the left was an immediate dismissal.”
“I saw people say on the left that I was proposing a new three-fifths compromise, harkening back to the days when a slave was only considered three-fifths of a person,” he said. “I was accused of supporting apartheid. I was accused of supporting a DREAM Act without a dream.”
He continued: “Of course, a few months later, the president takes a similar idea and implements it through executive action and now it’s the greatest idea in the world.”
Rubio called for a “balanced approach” to immigration reform – a phrase that Democrats have used to describe national debt reduction plans.
“I’d try to raise the issue and people would say, ‘Look, I just don’t want to go there again. I tried that five years ago, I tried that three years ago, and all I got was grief,’” Rubio said. “That’s the impression I got when I walked into the Senate, and I want you to know, it wasn’t just Republicans. It was senators who had been burned by the way this issue was discussed and approached, and just really didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”
One thing he now understands, he said, is “how truly complicated this issue has become.”
“Both sides like to talk about this issue like it’s an easy yes-or-no answer,” Rubio said. “It’s much more complicated than that. And those of us involved in the debate need to start to recognize that openly – that both sides of it raise valid points.”
“Yes, it is a law-and-order issue, but it’s also a human issue,” he said. “These are real people. These are human beings who have children and hopes and dreams. These are people who are doing what virtually any of us would do if our children were hungry, if their country were dangerous, if they had no hope for their future. Who among us would not do whatever it took to feed our children and provide for them a better future?”
The other side, Rubio continued, “is equally guilty of oversimplifying it; illegal immigration is a real problem.”
“Sometimes I feel like people are demanding their rights. The truth is there is no right to illegally immigrate to the United States. And when we talk about illegal immigration, it’s not about demanding rights; it’s about appealing to the compassion of the most compassionate nation in the history of the world.”
In what seemed to be a direct plea to the GOP’s far right, he also contended that “some people take the legitimate concerns of illegal immigration and turn it into panic and turn that panic into fear and anger and turn that anger into votes and money.”
Some political forces want the immigration debate to continue to be deadlocked, Rubio argued, because “they have concluded that this issue unresolved is more powerful.”
“They want it to stay unresolved -- it’s easier to influence elections,” he said. “It’s easier to use to raise money.”
Rubio did not offer specifics about how to solve the problem, much as Mitt Romney did not on Thursday when he addressed the conference. But Senator Rubio said that compromise is the only way forward.
“I’ve talked about what you do about the kids, but what about everybody else?” he said. “Here’s the truth, if we’re honest with ourselves: We don’t know yet. It’s not easy. I know we’re not going to round up and deport 12 million people. I know we’re not going to grant amnesty to 12 million people. Somewhere between those two ideas is the solution – that will never be easy, but I promise you it will get easier to find if we have a legal immigration system that works and the confidence of the American people that we’re serious about enforcing the laws.”
Senator Rubio -- a voice in the wilderness perhaps, but perhaps he ought to be given the GOP immigration portfolio officially. He is the only political leader in America right now who is addressing the real issues or reaching out to try to solve them.