Marco Rubio wants series of immigration bills


The Florida senator had preferred the piecemeal method to immigration reform. | AP Photo
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By SEUNG MIN KIM | 10/28/13 9:28 AM EDT Updated: 10/28/13 11:40 AM EDT

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a key congressional Republican advocate of an immigration overhaul, is now calling for reform bills that are less sweeping than the comprehensive legislation he authored this year with a bipartisan group of senators.

His spokesman said in a statement Monday that Rubio wants to now zero in on areas of immigration reform where Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the Capitol could agree.

While some facets of immigration reform enjoy broad bipartisan support – such as boosting the number of visas available for high-skilled immigrants – one major point of disagreement is what to do with the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“We should not allow an inability to do everything to keep us from doing something,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said in an e-mail Monday. “At this time, the only approach that has a realistic chance of success is to focus on those aspects of reform on which there is consensus through a series of individual bills.

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“Otherwise, this latest effort to make progress on immigration will meet the same fate as previous efforts: failure,” Conant added.

Rubio, who came into Congress as a favorite of the tea party movement, had been a pivotal Republican backer of an immigration overhaul and had been considered a key bridge to conservatives who could sell reform to skeptics. Although the Senate bill that Rubio helped write garnered 68 votes in June, House Republican leaders have declared it dead in their chamber and have instead advocated for a piecemeal approach that would reform U.S. immigration laws with a collection of individual bills.

The Florida senator had preferred the piecemeal method to immigration reform, Conant noted, but put that aside to craft a bipartisan solution in the Democratic-led Senate.

“Unlike many of the proponents of reform in the Democratic party, he did so despite strong opposition within his own party and at a significant and well documented political price,” the spokesman added.

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But congressional support for a large-scale, comprehensive approach “simply does not exist at this time,” Conant said, pointing to the exits of three House Republicans – John Carter and Sam Johnson of Texas and Raul Labrador of Idaho – from a bipartisan immigration group.

Rubio would not oppose going to a conference committee, but would want any bicameral negotiations to be limited to what the House passes, Conant said. He told the conservative website Breitbart News over the weekend that if the House passes smaller-scale bills, a conference committee should not be then used as a “ruse” to produce more wide-ranging legislation.

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The GOP-led House is far from passing its own legislation, however.

Two key committees have passed five bills reforming different parts of the immigration system. But they have not been scheduled for floor time yet. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) both said last week that they wanted to move forward on immigration reform this year, but there are deep divisions within the conference on how to approach an overhaul.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/1...#ixzz2j37fciMQ