How big is immigration in the Republican presidential race? Most GOP voters name either national security or the economy as their most important issue, while a smaller number name immigration. But for a significant part of the Republican base, immigration is at least a near-the-top issue. And some observers, like Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior strategist for Mitt Romney who is unaffiliated in this year’s campaign, believe immigration is “the key to understanding the Republican race.”
That is why the two candidates most closely associated with immigration reform, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, are still, at this late date, struggling to reconcile their advocacy of comprehensive reform with the Republican primary electorate’s opposition.
They’re taking different paths. Rubio is mostly trying to change the subject from the most controversial aspects of immigration reform. When he’s been asked, Rubio has deftly changed the subject — not away from immigration entirely, but away from the increases in immigration levels, near-immediate legalization, and path to citizenship in the Gang of Eight comprehensive reform bill. For his part, Bush, sinking in the polls, is swinging wildly, accusing Rubio of “cutting and running” on immigration reform while he, Bush, remained steadfast. While Bush isn’t wrong about Rubio, he is overlooking his own changes on the issue.
The issue hasn’t played a big role in the GOP debates, in part because moderators haven’t raised it very often. Rubio wasn’t even asked a serious question about the Gang of Eight until the fifth debate. But in the sixth debate, the one held by Fox Business in South Carolina Thursday, moderator Maria Bartiromo asked Rubio the most substantive, focused, and important question on immigration of the entire campaign so far.
“Under current law, the U.S. is on track to issue more new permanent immigrants on green cards over the next five years than the entire population of South Carolina,” Bartiromo said to Rubio. “The CBO says your 2013 immigration bill would have increased green card holders by another 10 million over 10 years. Why are you so interested in opening up borders to foreigners when American workers have a hard enough time finding work?”
Bartiromo’s question touched on a fundamental fact: comprehensive immigration reform, including Rubio’s, means more immigration. That’s not something the public supports; polling has consistently shown that small minorities support increasing levels of immigration, while large majorities support either reducing it or keeping it unchanged.
Rubio did not answer Bartiromo’s question. “Well, first of all, this is an issue that’s been debated now for 30 years,” he said:
And for 30 years, the issue of immigration has been about someone who’s in this country, maybe they’re here illegally, but they’re looking for a job. This issue is not about that anymore. First and foremost, this issue has to be now more than anything else about keeping America safe. And here’s why. There is a radical jihadist group that is manipulating our immigration system. And not just green cards. They’re looking — they’re recruiting people that enter this country as doctors and engineers and even fiances. They understand the vulnerabilities we have on the southern border. They’re looking — they’re looking to manipulate our — the visa waiver countries to get people into the United States. So our number one priority must now become ensuring that ISIS cannot get killers into the United States. So whether it’s green cards or any other form of entry into America, when I’m president if we do not know who you are or why you are coming, you are not going to get into the United States of America.
“So your thinking has changed?” asked Bartiromo.
“The issue is a dramatically different issue than it was 24 months ago,” Rubio said:
Twenty-four months ago, 36 months ago, you did not have a group of radical crazies named ISIS who were burning people in cages and recruiting people to enter our country legally. They have a sophisticated understanding of our legal immigration system and we now have an obligation to ensure that they are not able to use that system against us. The entire system of legal immigration must now be reexamined for security first and foremost, with an eye on ISIS. Because they’re recruiting people to enter this country as engineers, posing as doctors, posing as refugees. We know this for a fact. They’ve contacted the trafficking networks in the Western Hemisphere to get people in through the southern border. And they got a killer in San Bernardino in posing as a fiance.
Does anyone think Rubio even remotely addressed Bartiromo’s point? As Bartiromo noted, Rubio wrote immigration increases into the Gang of Eight bill. But he never told her why he did it, instead suggesting that the rise of ISIS has somehow made it all irrelevant.
Bush is also dealing with past support of comprehensive immigration reform. But he’s doing it in what could be a particularly counterproductive way, boasting that he has remained steadfast in support of a position that many GOP voters oppose, while Rubio caved to the voters’ will when the going got tough.
Speaking to the press Friday in South Carolina — where he accepted the endorsement of Rubio’s Gang of Eight colleague Lindsey Graham — Bush said he supported Rubio’s immigration reform in 2013. Rubio “asked me to support that bill,” Bush said, “and I said yeah, of course.”
But then came the growth of Republican opposition and a lot of political heat. “Marco cut and run,” Bush said “Plain and simple. For whatever reason, there may be legitimate reasons, but he cut and run. He asked for my support on a bill and he cut and run. And he cut and run on his colleagues as well. That bill passed the Senate — who knows what would have happened in the House?”
As he often does, Bush cited his 2013 book, Immigration Wars, as a sign of his own consistency on the issue. “I supported [Rubio’s effort], even though my ideas were clearly different, particularly on the path to legalization,” Bush explained. “I wrote a book about it. My views haven’t changed from that book being published more than four years ago.”
Actually, Bush’s views did change, or at least appeared to change, from the time he and co-author Clint Bolick wrote the book, in 2012, to the time it was published in March 2013. In the book, Bush wrote that it is “absolutely vital” that illegal immigrants face consequences for their actions. “Those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship,” Bush wrote. Yes, illegal immigrants could become permanent legal residents, but not citizens. From Immigration Wars:
A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage. However, illegal immigrants who wish to become citizens should have the choice of returning to their native countries and applying through normal immigration processes that now would be much more open than before.
That was a fairly tough position among backers of comprehensive immigration reform in 2012. But by the next year, when the book came out, it appeared the Gang of Eight would succeed, that reform would pass Congress, and it was therefore politically safe to advocate a path to citizenship. Bush adjusted his position.
“We wrote this book last year, not this year, and we proposed a path to legalization, so anybody that had come illegally would have immediately a path to legalization,” Bush told MSNBC in March 2013. “If you can craft that in law, where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally, I’m for it. I don’t have a problem with that.”
In the course of two days, both Bush and Rubio struggled to deal with their past positions on immigration reform. Given the mood in much of the GOP today, it seems likely there will be more maneuvering ahead as voting approaches.
