Potential 2016 presidential candidate Marco Rubio yesterday pressed ahead with his own multistep immigration plan amid criticism that he has been forced into backtracking on comprehensive immigration reform because of conservative voters; however, the first-term Florida Republican senator told Fox News Sunday that he did not get elected in order to watch national poll numbers.
Rubio says that Washington needs to address the immigration issues’ root causes, which have transformed into a crisis situation whereby tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant minors from Central America have been illegally entering the United States across the southern border of the country. Rubio says that among these problems is the 2008 law aimed at protecting children from non-bordering nations from trafficking and the 2012 executive memo from President Obama deferring deportation for young people brought to the US illegally as children.
Rubio also noted that Juan Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras, has indicated that it is the ambiguities in the laws in the United States that have resulted in human traffickers convincing families to engage their services to get their children away from their violent neighborhoods. “It’s serving as a lure,” Rubio states.
Rubio has also defended his own immigration plan by saying that it is still comprehensive but is presented in a manner that is more likely to be enacted by Congress. “We will never have the votes necessary to pass one bill,” he stated.