Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., On Tuesday rejected President Biden’s immigration proposal, describing his request for an 8-year path to citizenship for illegal immigrants as a “general amnesty”.
In a statement describing the bill as “non-initial”, Rubio said that before dealing with immigration, Biden and Congress should deal with COVID-19, the economy and the threat from China.
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“America must always welcome immigrants who want to become Americans. But we need laws that decide who and how many people can come here, and those laws must be followed and applied, ”he said.
“There are many issues that I think we can work on in cooperation with President-elect Biden, but a general amnesty for people who are here illegally will not be one of them,” he said.
Biden is proposing an 8-year path for the millions of illegal immigrants in the country. It also includes some limited border security measures, as well as funding for countries south of the border to prevent the root causes of migration.
Democrats have control of the House, the Senate and the White House and are likely to be united in their support of the legislation. However, in the Senate, the bill will need 10 Republican votes to pass and be sent to Biden’s table.
Rubio was one of the members of the 2013 “Gang of Eight” that sought to find a compromise with immigration reform. That effort ended up failing. Rubio’s rejection of the legislation, at least in its current form, suggests that the bill will struggle to gain the support of the Republican Party.
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The Democrats’ effort to pass the Senate bill is being led by Senator Robert Menendez, DN.J., another member of the 2013 “Gang of Eight”. He said in a statement on Wednesday that there is an “imperative” moral and economic to do that. “
“This plan is not just to fix our broken immigration system, but to build a better one that brings families together, pull the undocumented community out of the shadows and into the path of citizenship, defend human rights, address the root causes of migration and include a strategy border security, “he said.
However, earlier in the week, Menendez told The Washington Post that the Biden proposal was “definitely” more liberal than the 2013 compromise, which included more vigorous border security measures.
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Rubio’s statement is one of several statements by Republicans that the proposal will face strong opposition from the Republican Party. Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Blocked on Tuesday the quick consideration of the appointment of Alejandro Mayorkas – Biden’s choice to head the Department of Homeland Security – citing the immigration proposal, as well as Mayorkas’ security responses frontier.
Meanwhile, President Biden on Wednesday was taking a series of steps to reverse Donald Trump’s immigration policies, signing orders to halt construction of the border wall and end Trump-era travel bans.