«NO SOMOS RUBIOS» Campaign Protest in Washington DC highlights continued disconnect between Rubio and majority of Latinos
Young Latino students held a protest and press conference this week outside the 2012Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), raising legitimate concerns about Senator Marco Rubio’s anti-immigrant positions and questioning his opposition to supporting immigrant students through the DREAM Act.
A crowd of DREAM Act students held signs high above their heads that read: RUBIO, YOU SAID: «our legal immigration system is broken and needs to be modernized» Are U for the DREAM ACT OR NOT? and “PICK A SIDE: FOR IMMIGRANTS OR NOT” to demonstrate increasing Latino opposition to Rubio’s positions.
“When he comes in front of Latino audiences, Marco Rubio says pretty words about DREAM Act students, but when he goes over to places like CPAC he brags about his refusal to cosponsor the DREAM Act. He needs to make a decision, is he with us or is he with the anti-immigrant Tea Party crowd?” said Matias Ramos.
Rubio’s attraction in the eyes of Republican political pundits is tied to the belief that the selection of Rubio as Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party would deliver the Latino vote. Presente Action and a coalition of partner organizations held a press conference two weeks ago that all but dispelled that notion.
«Senator Rubio must come clean. He cannot continue catering to the anti-immigrant Tea Party and delivering flowery speeches on the “tone” of the immigration debate while also continuing to stand in absoluteopposition to the DREAM Act, comprehensive immigration reform and other pro-immigrant policies. We cannot allow him to quietly support anti-Latino laws like Arizona’s racist SB-1070 profiling law and other anti-immigrant policies that are completely rejected by the overwhelming majority of Latino voters. He needs to state unequivocally where he stands on the immigration issues that matter to Latinos. Marco Rubio is either deceiving his main base of support, the Tea Party, or he’s deceiving Latinos whose support he and the Republican party would like to have-or he’s deceiving both. This cannot and will not continue.» said Arturo Carmona, Executive Director of Presente Action.
Rubio’s recent public comments have been inconsistent with his positions on issues most important to a majority of Latinos across the nation. In his January 27 remarks to at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference, Rubio said “[T]here is broad support in America for the notion that for those children that were brought here at a very young age, by their parents through no fault of their own, who have grown up here their entire lives, and now want to serve in the military or are high academic achievers and want to go to school and contribute to America’s future, I think there is broad bipartisan support for the notion that we should somehow figure out a way to accommodate them.”
And yet, Rubio refuses to support to DREAM Act and has failed to take a leadership role in offering a viable option for addressing comprehensive immigration reform. The only thing certain so far is that Senator Rubio has refused to reject racist, Tea Party-sponsored legislation in several states and continues to tout his ties to those extremists.
DREAM Act students and others across American within the Latino majority will continue to demand that Senator Rubio define where he really stands once and for all: with DREAM Act students and Latino immigrants or with the Tea Party.
Source: Presente Action
