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Florida Sen. Marco Rubio addressed immigration, the Republican Party’s efforts to reach Hispanic voters and his own vice-presidential nominee prospects during an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Rubio spoke about the difficulties his party has had reaching Latino voters.
“The policies are important, but the rhetoric is sometimes the impediment,” Rubio told the Journal. “Sometimes—and I’m not pointing fingers at anyone—the way the message is communicated is harmful and has hurt Republicans.”
One Democratic congressman questioned why Republican candidates would consider Rubio for the vice president slot.
“You have all these Republican candidates during the debates tripping over each other to see who can be more…anti-immigration,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.). “So they…pick Marco Rubio, and they think that will be enticing to Latinos?”
No matter what people say, Rubio say’s he has a job to do as a Florida Senator.
“I take it as a compliment, but I have a job, and it’s an important job,” he said.
Rubio also shared his public views on immigration, which include opposition to the Dream Act and a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, and what he feels the Republican Party needs to do when it comes to immigration.
“The Republican Party needs to be the pro-legal immigration party,” Mr. Rubio told the Journal. “We need to say, ‘We believe in immigration and we think it’s good for America.’ But it has to be orderly, a system based on law, a system that works.”
Rubio also addressed this week’s Washington Post article alleging that he embellished his family history:
“I concede dates were wrong. We didn’t know that. As soon as we figured out the dates were wrong, we stopped saying that. We were relying on the family’s oral history which, 50 years later, was wrong.”
“I disagree that it was politically advantageous to me in terms of saying it. Nobody voted for me that thought my parents came in ’59 that wouldn’t have voted for me knowing it had been 1956. My family story is the same one. The speeches I gave on campaign trail, I could still give them.
My parents came from Cuba, they came to the United States in search of a better life, they tried and planned to live in Cuba again, and couldn’t because of communism. They returned to an exile community where I was raised.”
“The essence of my story was that as a child of exiles, I understood that America was different and that you can lose your country. None of that has changed. The story is the same one.”
Read excerpts from the interview and more at www.wsj.com.
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