Representative Carlos Curbelo is one of a number of freshly-elected Republican lawmakers who seem to set to give their party a shake-up when it comes to a number of key issues. Curbelo has already diverged from the stance taken on immigration reform by many of his colleagues in the House of Representatives, supporting many of the elements of the comprehensive reform bill passed by the Senate last year.
The Florida Republican is the son of Cuban exiles and has gone out on a limb by publicly attacking some of his fellow lawmakers for trying to end protection for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, thereby exposing them to the risk of being deported. Curbelo is not the only freshly-elected Republican lawmaker to voice opposition to the line taken over immigration reform by their party leadership. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, who are fellow Florida Cuban-Americans, have also criticized their party leaders for failing to take a vote on the Senate immigration reform bill.
Curbelo agrees that President Obama should not use his executive authority to enact immigration reform, but again strikes a more moderate tone on the subject than many others in his party. He is against ideas such as trying to impeach the president and bringing about another government shutdown, explaining: “The past has taught us that those strategies don’t work. Our goal is to move forward on an issue to find a solution for the country, and those strategies aren’t going to lead us there.”