Marco Rubio biography says grandfather was ordered deported
Marco Rubio biography says grandfather was ordered deported
By MIKE ALLEN | 4/25/12 7:34 AM EDT
A forthcoming biography of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is described by author Manuel Roig-Franzia as a “politician who built a political identity on his family story,” reveals an immigration hell for Rubio’s Cuban-born maternal grandfather, who was ordered deported from Florida because he flew in from Cuba without a visa, a decade before Rubio’s birth.
Roig-Franzia, a Style section writer for The Washington Post, writes that the grandfather’s treatment during his 1962 run-in with federal authorities “was not unlike the present-day experiences of many Mexicans and Central Americans who come to the United States legally but later run afoul of visa laws and find their lives irreversibly upended.”
Rubio was born a U.S. citizen in Miami in 1971 to two Cuban exiles who arrived in the U.S. in the late 1950s. Roig-Franzia reports that the grandfather, Pedro Victor García, did not leave the U.S. as ordered, but remained in Miami, possibly on retroactive refugee status.
The episode could draw renewed scrutiny of the personal narrative of Rubio, a possible running mate for Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Rubio is taking the lead in his party as a more moderate voice on immigration and plans to offer his own plan in coming months as a counter to the more liberal Democratic proposal supported by President Barack Obama.
Whether Rubio is chosen by Romney or contemplates running on his own in 2016, Rubio looks to have a bright national political future as a 40-year-old, Hispanic Republican beloved by conservatives.
(Also on POLITICO: Rubio camp issues statement on book excerpts)
“The Rise of Marco Rubio,” an unauthorized biography being published by Simon & Schuster, is one of two books about Rubio due out June 19. The other, written by Rubio, is called “American Son: A Memoir,” published by Sentinel. The publishers are racing to the stores, with each having moved up the publication date because of the competition, and Rubio’s hotness as a potential vice presidential pick.
“The Rise of Marco Rubio” has a skeptical tone but gives Rubio his due, comparing his 2010 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference to Obama’s breakout speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
“Rubio had arrived on the national scene at a time when both parties were — again — forced to confront the enduring and growing power of Hispanic voters. … Good timing matters, but it isn’t everything. Execution counts too. And each time Rubio’s timing has been good, his executive has been even better,” Roig-Franzia writes.
The author — who conducted more than 100 interviews for the book, and located a scratchy recording of the grandfather’s immigration hearing — notes that as Rubio rose in national prominence this year, “his personal history continued to be questioned.”
Here is how the book tells the story about Rubio’s grandpa: “One … who saw possibilities in the new Cuba of Fidel Castro was Senator Rubio’s [maternal] grandfather, Pedro Victor García. He was a proud man. In the two years since he’d emigrated to the United States, he had tried to make a living but never quite succeeded. After odd jobs in New York, he had found his way back to Miami, the city where the Rubios were making a life, a city with a climate closer to his native Cuba’s. … On January 15, 1959, two weeks after [Cuban dictator] Batista abdicated, Pedro Victor flew back to the island of his birth [The future senator was born in Miami in 1971.] He had left behind a shoe store in Havana … His new employer was the Castro government. The job was with Hacienda, Cuba’s Treasury Ministry. … “[A]fter the [1961] Bay of Pigs fiasco, Pedro Victor’s … unease with the Castro regime was [growing] … In the summer of 1962 he saw an opportunity. He asked his bosses for a vacation, and … they granted it. And so it was that on August 31, 1962, he took an incredibly risky step.
He bought a ticket and boarded Pan American Airlines flight 2422 bound for Miami. Pedro Victor’s troubles began not long after the plane landed. He had a Cuban passport and a U.S. alien registration card, but he didn’t have a visa. … A U.S. immigration official named E.E. Spink detained the sixty-three-year-old grandfather. Spink signed a form that read, ‘you do not appear to me to be clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to enter the United States.’ A photographer snapped a mug shot of Pedro Victor with his alien registration number on a block in front of him. … His cheeks were sunken, there were bags under his eyes, and his mouth was tight. … The paper trail is inconclusive about whether he was forced to spend time in a detention facility. … On October 4, 1962, Pedro Victor appeared before a special inquiry officer, a kind of immigration judge, named Milton V. Milich … Pedro Victor’s hearing was recorded on an Editor Voicewriter … Now full of scratches and audible pops, the records are a remarkable artifact of another era. In thirty-three minutes of testimony they tell the story of a man caught in an immigration non-man’s land, a lesson about the laws that decide who gets to stay in the United States and who must go. … Milich orders ‘that the applicant be excluded and deported from the United States.’ … Pedro Victor … did not leave the country as ordered. In those days deportees weren’t necessarily thrown onto a plane … Pedro Victor’s legal status would remain unresolved for years. He stayed in Miami … [In 1967] Pedro Victor returned to the immigration bureaucracy to ask, once again, to become a permanent resident. … The form he filled out then states that he had been a Cuban refugee since February 1965. Refugee status may have been granted retroactively.”
Other nuggets in “The Rise of Marco Rubio”:
—“The Miami Son”: “Not long after arriving in Las Vegas [at age 7 or 8], Marco — along with his mother and sister, Veronica – began reading the Book of Mormon. Eventually, Marco, his sister Veronica and their mother were baptized as Mormons. Marco converted [from Catholicism] to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with enthusiasm. … Mario [Rubio’s father], who had worked as a bartender for years, couldn’t embrace a faith that wouldn’t let him drink and smoke. … Marco attended LDS youth groups and often walked to chapel with his family because his mother could not drive. The cousins idolized the Osmonds … Marco, his sister, Veronica, and their cousin, Michelle, liked to perform Osmond songs at family get-togethers. ‘Tony’ – as the cousins called Marco, referencing his middle name Antonio – was so entranced by the Osmonds that he joined [a] … trip to Provo, Utah, to tour the pop group’s recording studio. … [W]hen the Rubios decided to return to Miami … Marco, his sister and mother returned to the Catholic Church that they had left behind for Mormonism. The exact date of their return is in dispute. Marco has said the family converted back to Catholicism while still … in Las Vegas, and that he received his first communion on Christmas Day 1984 [age 13].”
—“Introduction: The Heir”: “American politics had never seen anything like him: a young, made-for-YouTube Hispanic Republican with realistic national prospects, establishment backing[,] an electoral appeal that extended well beyond his ethnicity. There had been Hispanic stars before. But they tended to be Democrats and they tended to fizzle.”
—“Afterword”: “In 2012, as his personal history continued to be questioned, Marco Rubio – the politician who built a political identity on his family story – spent campaign donations to hire a California firm to study him, to conduct a vetting process not unlike the examinations of possible running mates conducted by presidential nominees. … In two decades of ascension he had learned to slide quickly on the issues, tailoring messages on immigration and spending that got him where he needed to go, even if they sometimes raised questions about his political core. … Rubio had reached a position of influence with remarkable speed. But in politics, just as on the football fields of his youth, speed alone doesn’t guarantee that you’ll react in time to get you to the right place at the right time. You need to be prepared to execute the right move when you get there. Now, with an eye on the national stage, Rubio needs all the diligence, tenacity, and patience of his ancestors to reach the goal line.”
Marco Rubio biography says grandfather was ordered deported - Mike Allen - POLITICO.com
