The cornerstone of the Republican appeal to former immigrants who are now voters should be this challenge: Join us in preserving America as the land of personal freedom and economic opportunity, not a place that more and more resembles the socialist and communist failures from which you fled.
In the next few days you will have to make one of the most important decisions of your political career. You will have to decide whether or not to endorse the amnesty bill produced by the Senate “Gang of Eight,” or walk away from it as a bad bargain and a betrayal of your principles.
I can offer you three good reasons for walking away from the deal, and then I want to make you an offer of a better deal – a deal that is good for the Republican Party, good for the country and, therefore, good for Marco Rubio.
The Schumer-Menendez “Gang of Eight” amnesty plan is none of those things. It is bad public policy, a bad bargain for the Republican Party and a very bad gamble for Marco Rubio.
The Schumer-Menendez plan is bad for the country because it is a foolish repeat of the mistakes of the dishonest 1986 amnesty deal. Its most glaring weakness is the one a certain senator from Florida warned against repeatedly over the past year: It does not require genuine border security as a precondition for the legalization of 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants.
Make no mistake: It is legalization that is the main prize, not a green card. Everyone knows that after legal status is granted it will never be revoked – so the only political incentive for achieving true border security has been removed.
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