Can Rubio Make Peace With Conservatives on Immigration?

Some conservatives wrote off Marco Rubio as a prospective candidate for president because of the Florida Republican’s work on, and advocacy for, the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill.

The first-term senator began to talk about that legislation as a mistake, though, as he moved toward his April 13 announcement that he was formally entering the race for the White House.

In this photo with the Gang of Eight he looks as if he's having

second thoughts ... Perhaps a 'What the hell am I doing here'

moment?

Even so, he mentioned the immigration issue only once as he declared his candidacy at Miami’s Freedom Tower, a former immigrant-intake facility.

“If we reform our tax code, reduce regulations, control spending, modernize our immigration laws and repeal and replace Obamacare,” Rubio said about halfway through the speech, “the American people will create millions of better-paying modern jobs.”

Marco Rubio on immigration: Border security comes first

“The thing that’s different with Marco is that he’s responded to criticism,” one close observer of policy battles in Congress for an outside group tells The Daily Signal.

Rubio’s problem, this person adds, is that he chose several years ago to make immigration reform his signature domestic issue.

Although not straining to bring up what to do about immigrants already in the country illegally, Rubio, who turned 44 this month, appears to be increasingly comfortable explaining why he decided they should wait longer before the government considers legal status for them.

‘There Is No Right to Illegally Immigrate’

In a May 1 appearance at a gathering of conservatives sponsored by the National Review Institute, the son of Cuban immigrants forcefully took on liberal activists who claim a “right” for immigrants in the country illegally to become citizens.

“There is no right to illegally immigrate anywhere in the world,” he told the crowd.

Watch Rubio's April 19 interview on 'Face the Nation

“What I’m saying to people is that we can’t do it in a massive piece of legislation,” Rubio said of reforming the immigration system and addressing the status of illegal immigrants in an interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS News that aired April 19 on “Face the Nation.”

He said Americans have a message for their public officials about the more than 12 million living here unlawfully: “We know we have to deal with this. We’re not prepared to deal with this until first you can prove to us that this will never happen again.”

Read the rest of the story HERE.

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