Sen. Marco Rubio is among the chamber’s most conservative members on a variety of issues. The Florida Republican, for example, has positioned himself as a fierce opponent of abortion rights and marriage equality — he endorsed the fight against same-sex marriage even after the Supreme Court approved it — and in recent years, when bipartisan agreements came together in the Senate, Rubio tended to reject them.
There was, however, a notable exception to the GOP’s senator’s far-right vision: Rubio used to be quite constructive when it came to immigration policy. Indeed, a decade ago, the Floridian was a member of the so-called “Gang of Eight,” which produced a popular bill that cleared the Senate with relative ease.
Rubio soon after launched a presidential bid and distanced himself from the legislation he helped write. Eight years later, the Republican’s approach to the issue is practically unrecognizable compared to the positions the senator used to hold.
As a Washington Post analysis noted, Rubio, sounding very much like an anti-immigration hardliner, told CNN’s Jake Tapper this week that Democrats “want to turn a bunch of illegal immigrants into voters.” A few days later, the senator went even further:
“Asylum is a pathway to citizenship,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Democrats want mass asylum because they need lots of new voters.”
So, a few things.
First, Democrats don’t appear to “need” a lot of new voters. The party seems to be defeating Republicans in quite a few election cycles lately with the voters who already exist.
Second, as Rubio moves even further to the right on the issue, he seems to be inching ever closer to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that made its way from the extremist fringe to the GOP mainstream.
Third, if the senator is so concerned about existing asylum policies, Rubio should’ve been delighted with the recent bipartisan compromise — co-authored by one of his conservative Republican colleagues — which would’ve raised the standard to get asylum, sending away those who don’t qualify, and expediting cases for those who do.
Rubio nevertheless voted to kill the compromise package. Nearly all Senate Democrats — the ones he believes “want mass asylum” — voted to pass the bill.
But even if we put all of these relevant details aside, I find myself stuck on the senator’s unique circumstances: Rubio is a Cuban American. His family immigrated to the United States. His own grandfather was labeled an undocumented immigrant. What’s more, Rubio lives in the Miami area — which is home to a vibrant immigrant community, filled with people who’ve benefited from asylum policies.
Rubio’s far-right line isn’t just wrong; it’s odd.