Washington Examiner

Morning Examiner: Marco Rubio’s latest border security farce

Conn Carroll
June 3, 2013


Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., knows that the biggest challenge in selling citizenship for illegal immigrants to conservatives is convincing them that this will be the last batch of immigrants that will ever be granted citizenship after entering the United States illegally. To that end, Rubio has made the border security aspects of his bill the centerpiece of his sales pitch. Problem is, his bill has no real border security guarantees in it, so Rubio has been forced to keep changing his story.
Border commission bust

When the bill first came out, Rubio did a comprehensive tour of conservative radio shows selling a border commission made up of federal and state officials as the linchpin security measure of his plan. For example, here is what he told Mark Levin:

"It requires if the Department of Homeland Security does not achieve 100 percent operational awareness and 90 percent apprehensions on the border, they lose control of the issue, to a commission, not a Washington commission, to a local commission, made up of the governors of the four border states, talking about Texas and Arizona, where they will then finish the job of securing the border, including the fencing plan."


But the border commission would do no such thing. Far from taking “control of the issue” and “finishing the job,” under Rubio’s bill, all the commission does is issue a report and give it to the Department of Homeland Security. That’s it. DHS can then throw it directly in the trash.
After the border commission fraud was exposed, Rubio dropped the talking point and instead started discussing how the bill needed to become stronger. “The bill that’s in place right now probably can’t pass the House,” Rubio said at the end of April.
A plan to plan

Unfortunately for Rubio, the Senate Judiciary Committee made his immigration bill weaker, not stronger, on border security. Now, as it moves to the Senate floor, Rubio has hatched another gimmick to make his bill sound tougher: He’ll write his own border security plan. “It’s very simple. If we can come up with a plan that people have confidence in for the border, I believe we’ll have immigration reform,” Rubio recently told Fox News. “If we cannot, we will not, and we should not. I don’t think it will pass without those measures in there. I just don’t.”
But this solution is just as worthless as Rubio’s border commission was.

Once Congress writes a plan, there is nothing in the bill that guarantees President Obama’s DHS will actually implement it. Conservatives, like Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced amendments that would make the legalization of illegal immigrants contingent on the actual implementation of border security.
But the pro-amnesty Republicans and their Democratic allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted down all of those amendments. Democrats simply will not allow any changes to the bill that alter its fundamental amnesty-now-for-enforcement-later framework.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he is confident of getting the 60 votes he needs to pass Rubio’s immigration bill in the Senate. And he’s probably right. The real target of Rubio’s new security sales job is the House. And it is unclear how much, if any, headway he is making.

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