Rubio, Bush share immigration stance
The biggest take-away from Sen. Marco Rubio’s GOP presidential campaign tour through Northern Nevada last week was that Rubio’s stance on immigration is much like that of Jeb Bush – at least with one critical point.
Both candidates have told Northern Nevada audiences that immigration should be more based on the job skills the potential legal immigrant possesses, not the current family-based system. It should focus on how that particular person could help the national economy, instead of immigration being connected to family already in the U.S.
Both candidates noted, too, that a major part of the nation’s illegal immigration problem stems from people overstaying their visas.
“Legal immigration must be done on the basis of what you can contribute and what job you can do,” Rubio told a crowd at the Peppermill resort last week that was estimated by his campaign to be about 500.
In August, Bush told a tough crowd in North Las Vegas that part of his immigration plan would “narrow family petitions and make sure we expedite spouse and minor children.” He also said the U.S. immigration system should “create an economic strategy for the country by picking people who can make an immediate contribution.”
However, it was an immigration system tied to family connections that helped get Rubio to the United States and the Las Vegas neighborhood where he lived during six years of his childhood (1979 to 1985).
Rubio acknowledged the immigration system was based on family when his parents came to the U.S. from Cuba in 1956. He told a Reno audience an immigration system based on family “might have worked in 1956 but the world has changed.”
Here’s Rubio’s immigration story: Rubio’s mom and the mother of state Sen. Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, were two of seven sisters – eight if you count a sister who died early.
Mo’s mom was already in the U.S. in 1956, living in New York City.
Both Rubio and Denis have told me that their moms were very close. The families lived three blocks from each other in Las Vegas.
If it wasn’t for Mo’s mom, Rubio might now be managing a Cuban baseball team or something, not running for president of the United States.
“In fact, when my mother came to the United States, Mo’s mom was already in New York and that is how my parents were able to come and get a green card,” Rubio said in an interview with the RGJ. “Mo’s mom already had a green card, living in New York City.”
RUBIO PROBABLY had the most successful stop in Northern Nevada of any of the Republican or Democratic presidential candidates so far this campaign cycle.
Rubio didn’t just visit. He stayed overnight. He hit Reno with a speech at the Peppermill on Monday night. Then the next day, he started campaigning in Carson City early in the morning, became the first presidential candidate to ever visit Yerington that afternoon then capped off his Northern Nevada tour with a rally in Fallon that evening.
Rubio got tons of good media coverage with front-page stories in the RGJ and from the newspapers that cover Carson City, Yerington and Fallon. He was all over TV, too. His visit to Reno led the 11 o’clock news Monday night on all three Reno stations.
The media coverage went on for two days. Can’t think of another candidate this cycle that got so much bang for their buck in Northern Nevada.
RUBIO SMILED when he was reminded that he was the first presidential candidate to visit Yerington.
“That is pretty amazing,” he said. “I mean I just can’t believe that is the case. But at least I will have some place in the history books, right? I could be a question on ‘Jeopardy!,’ the Nevada version of ‘Jeopardy!’ ”
HIGHER EDUCATION WAS another subject Rubio touched on in Reno. I mentioned in an interview that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders advocated for free state college tuition while he was in Reno. It seemed to hit a nerve with Rubio.
“First of all nothing is free,” Rubio said. “Someone has got to pay for it, whether it is the taxpayer or whoever it may be, someone has to pay for it. That is the first point I’d make.
“The second is, unfortunately, people on the left like Bernie Sanders, their solution to every problem is to raises taxes on somebody and pour more money into an outdated model. The problem with higher education today is that it is an out-dated model. It was designed in the 1950s and 60s and no longer meet the reality of the 21st century. So that needs to be change.”