Rubio Told Spanish TV He Backed Amnesty, Keeping Obama’s Executive Orders
Image: Rubio Told Spanish TV He Backed Amnesty, Keeping Obama’s Executive Orders (Wire Services Photo)
By Todd Beamon | Thursday, 18 Feb 2016 08:06 PM
Marco Rubio has supported amnesty for illegal immigrants in several interviews on Spanish television, while speaking against it on the campaign trail and in Saturday’s Republican debate in South Carolina, the vice chairman of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County in Florida said Thursday.
“My fellow Miamian wants to have it both ways,” Manny Roman wrote in an op-ed piece at Breitbart News. “He wants to do the rounds on Spanish media pandering to their viewers and then go in front of the American people, in English … and pretend to hold a conservative position on immigration.”
Roman, who also is Hispanic-American, said that Rubio touted amnesty in these interviews on Univision, the large Spanish-language cable television network:
Last April, he said that he would not immediately rescind President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program because it helped many people. “I wouldn’t undo it [DACA] immediately, as it is already benefiting a lot of people,” he said.
In discussing the Gang of Eight bill in June 2013, Rubio said that “first comes legalization of those here illegally, then comes border security.” He added that legalization was not conditional.
In the same interview, the senator said that “the vast majority of Republicans in Congress and throughout the country support a pathway to citizenship.”
During the Senate vote on the Gang of Eight bill in 2013, Rubio said that not granting citizenship to illegal immigrants currently in the United States was immoral because it “would create two tiers of residents in this country.” He added that he would lobby his “conservative colleagues in Congress hard” to get the amnesty bill passed.
“Marco Rubio’s back-and-forth, misleading statements in the last debate regarding his comments to the Spanish press is unacceptable for someone aspiring to become president of the United States,” Roman said.
