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Marco Rubio at Iowa Book Signing: Next President Should Not Support DACA/DAPA

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Today at a book signing in Iowa, Marco Rubio encountered Alejandro, an immigration reform advocate and pastor who asked him if the next president should support DACA and DAPA.  Here’s what Rubio said:

ALEJANDRO: Should the next president support DACA and DAPA?

RUBIO: No, I think we need to do the legislative fix.  I don’t think we should be doing executive orders that are unconstitutional.

ALEJANDRO: Do you still support the Senate immigration bill?

RUBIO: We can’t pass it.  We gotta do it in individual pieces.  We won’t be able to get anything done until we prove to people and show to them the future of illegal immigration is under control.  If we do that, I think people will be very reasonable about people who have been here a long time.  But we’ve tried.  Until we do that, we won’t even have the votes.  In fact, we have less votes today than when that passed.

Rubio, last week, was one of the GOP Senators who voted three times in favor of bringing up the DHS funding bill that would kill DACA and DAPA.  He has also said that he would “love to defund” executive action.

Rubio’s statement is also consistent with how he now supports piecemeal immigration reform, after a long (d)evolution away from his support for the Senate immigration bill that passed in 2013.  Contrary to what he says, there were enough votes to pass the Senate bill in the House — it’s Speaker Boehner who never brought it up for a vote.

Read more about Marco Rubio’s positions on immigration here.

View video of the encounter below, courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times: