In a recent interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos presidential hopeful, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL.), said he would leave President Obama’s 2012 executive action that gives work permits to DERAMers in place if elected president. Rubio did not say if he would allow current DACA recipients to renew their work permits or allow new applicants to receive work permits.
Through June 30, 2015, more than 1 million legal aliens have received work permits through DACA.
“DACA…applies to young people that arrived in this country at a very young age before they were adults and I don’t think we can immediately revoke that,” Sen. Rubio told Univision. “I’m not calling for it to be revoked tomorrow, or this week, or right away.”
He did say that the orders would have to end but didn’t say if he would end it once Congress passed legislation making DACA permanent or if he would end it when the work permits for current recipients expire.
“I think it will have to end at some point and I hope it will end because of some reform to the immigration laws,” he told Ramos.
Pres. Obama told Congress, “if folks are serious about getting immigration reform done [they should be] passing a bill and getting it to my desk. And then the executive actions that I take go away.” When pressed on his executive amnesty during an interview with George Stephanopoulos Pres. Obama countered, “Well, my response is pass a bill.”
While Sen. Rubio said he wouldn’t immediately end the DACA amnesty, he said he does not support Pres. Obama’s DAPA amnesty announced in 2014. The DAPA amnesty would have granted work permits to the parents of U.S. citizens who were in the country illegally, but a federal district court in Texas has issued a temporary injunction preventing the program from taking effect.
“There is a new executive action that applies to adults to a broader population of people and that I believe is the wrong approach,” Sen. Rubio said. “I would revoke it because it’s hurting our efforts to reform our immigration laws. It is it is adding credibility to the argument that we cannot do immigration reform because the federal government is not serious about enforcing immigration laws.”
Read more at Breitbart.
***Update***
On Nov. 4 Rubio's spokesman, Alex Conant clarified the senator's statements saying, “Marco went on Spanish media this week and rejected a comprehensive immigration reform approach, said that the immigration executive orders won’t be permanent policy under his administration, and that he would oppose legalization today because we first need to prevent a future illegal immigration crisis by enforcing our laws.”
“Marco also said it’s important not to end DACA immediately since it would be disruptive given all the people that have it,” continued Conant, “but that at a certain point it would have to end since it cannot be the permanent policy of the land.”
“In case anything was lost in translation, he believes we have to fix our broken immigration system in a series of smaller bills, starting with border security and enforcement, then modernizing our legal immigration system, and then eventually dealing with the illegal immigrants living here,” said Conant.
