Not too long ago, Florida senator Marco Rubio seemed like a very unlikely candidate to spearhead an immigration reform effort alongside the likes of John McCain and Chuck Schumer. “The most important thing we need to do is enforce our existing laws,” Rubio said in a 2009 interview with Javier Manjarres. “I am not, and I will never support any effort to grant blanket legalization/amnesty to folks who have entered, stayed in this country illegally.”

A year later, in a Senate debate with Charlie Crist, Rubio criticized the Florida governor for backing the 2007 McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. “He would have voted for the McCain plan,” Rubio said. “I think that plan is wrong, and the reason I think it’s wrong is that if you grant amnesty, as the governor proposes that we do, in any form, whether it’s back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America.”