With one eye on a White House run in 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio, who pitched a comprehensive immigration reform plan last year which passed the Senate but never made it to a House vote, has unveiled a new multi-part plan in his upcoming book,
"American Dreams," that includes everything but a pathway to citizenship.
"On the one hand, calls to grant amnesty to twelve million people are unrealistic and quite frankly irresponsible," the Florida Republican writes,
according to Politico, which obtained an advance copy of the book, due for release on Jan. 13.
"On the other hand, not a single opponent of the Senate bill I helped author proposed that we try to round up and deport twelve million human beings."
Instead, Rubio proposes a three-step plan: first, upgrade enforcement measures; second, switch from a "family-based" immigration" policy to a "work-and-skill-based" system, with more visas for those with high tech skills and a guest worker program and, third, deal with the 12 million illegal aliens already in the country, Politico reports.
This would involve registration of all illegal aliens and deportation of those who have committed serious crimes, issuing "temporary, non-immigrant visas" to those qualified, which would require background checks, paying a fine and learning to speak English, and then, a decade's wait before those people could apply for permanent residency, during which time illegal aliens would have to pay taxes and could not collect government benefits.
The enforcement part of Rubio's suggested program would involve securing the "most vulnerable and trafficked sectors of the southern border, mandatory E-verify and the full implementation of an entry-exit tracking system,"
the National Journal, which also obtained a pre-release copy of the book, reports.
Rubio admits that a comprehensive immigration plan, such as the one he sponsored, is "not realistic," the National Journal reports.
"We must begin by acknowledging, considering our recent experience with massive pieces of legislation, achieving comprehensive immigration reform of anything in a single bill is simply not realistic. Having tried that approach, I know this to be true firsthand.
"This three-step plan is not only the best way to reform our immigration system, it is, in my opinion, the only approach that has any chance of success," the National Journal quotes Rubio.
"Our immigration system, designed primarily to reunite families, is an outdated relic of the last century. This system worked for much of the 20th century, when we had no shortage of low-skill, middle-income jobs and the government safety net was still fairly limited.
But today we have low to nonexistent growth, a shortage of good jobs and a massive web of needs-based programs," Rubio writes.
He blasts Obama for stating that the border was "as secure as ever," and notes, "This fallacy was dramatically exposed when portions of our southern border were essentially overrun in the early part of 2014," Rubio writes.
He also accuses Obama of "simply ignoring, suspending, rewriting and violating the law through executive action. All of these things have left many to conclude that, no matter what enforcement mechanisms are written into law, this administration will simply ignore them.
"The result is a stalemate on an issue of critical importance," the National Journal quotes Rubio.
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