Sen. Marco Rubio claimed a do-over on the 2013 Senate immigration bill in Thursday’s GOP presidential debate, saying that his support for legalizing illegal immigrants has been overshadowed by threats of terrorism and he now thinks the focus of the system should be keeping out bad actors.
Mr. Rubio, Florida Republican, said the focus before was on how to deal with illegal immigrants and allow more workers. But he said recent attacks by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, have convinced him America’s enemies are determined to use the immigration system to sneak into the country.
“The issue has dramatically changed,” Mr. Rubio said. “This now has to be about stopping ISIS entering the United States.”
Mr. Rubio’s 2013 bill would have granted citizenship rights to most illegal immigrants and added 10 million new workers to the flow of legal immigrants over the next decade. The legislation, which he worked on with a group of seven other Republicans and Democrats, cleared the Senate but was never sent to the House, where GOP lawmakers called it an “amnesty” and said it would have been defeated.
Mr. Rubio has struggled since the beginning of the campaign with his authorship of the bill, and had previously said he would no longer pile all of the elements into a single major piece of legislation.
But on Thursday he took a mulligan on the entire issue, saying news that the Islamic State has vowed to exploit the U.S. immigration system has given him new insight.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said Mr. Rubio was rewriting his own history and said al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups existed in 2013, when Mr. Rubio was fighting for illegal immigrants.
“It was clear then like it is clear now that border security is national security,” Mr. Cruz said. “It is also the case that that Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill is that it expanded Barack Obama’s power to let in Syrian refugees. It enabled the president to certified them en masse without mandating meaningful background checks. I think that is a mistake.”
“You don’t get to say ’We need to secure the borders’ and at the same time try to give Barack Obama more authority to allow Middle Eastern refugees” to come in,” Mr. Cruz said.
Mr. Cruz, though, has been hit with charges that he, too, flip-flopped on immigration.
During the 2013 Senate debate he led an effort to remove citizenship rights from the bill but still to allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status, giving them the right to work and collect benefits in the U.S.
He now says that he didn’t intend for illegal immigrants to get legal status, and his 2013 amendment was a strategic move.
Mr. Rubio said Mr. Cruz has been all over the map.
“He used to say that he supported doubling the number of green cards, now you say that you are against it,” Mr. Rubio said. “You used to support a 500 percent increase in the number of guest workers and now you say you are against it. You used to support legalizing people who were here illegally, now you say you are against it. You used to say that you are in favor of birthright citizenship, now you say that you are against it.”
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been among most liberal of the GOP field on immigration, criticized both men, saying they needed to pick a stance and stick with it.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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