Marc Caputo: Misunderstanding Marco Rubio: immigration politics and DC spin

@MarcACaputo

The request from the liberal Campaign to Reform Immigration for America was simple — but strange.

“Ask Marco Rubio to support a pathway to citizenship,” a caller from the group said.

Huh?

“Marco Rubio already supports a pathway to citizenship,” I said when I answered my home phone Wednesday. “I don’t understand.”

“He doesn’t support a pathway to citizenship,” the caller shot back.

Me: “Umm, yes he does.”

Caller: “No. He only supports a system of temporary work permits…”

Me: “I really think you have your facts wrong. Where are you getting them?”

The caller hung up.

Count this little back and forth as one of the myriad examples of why immigration reform might not pass Congress despite a strong bipartisan push.

The interest groups on the right and the left might spread just enough propaganda, just enough falsehoods, just enough passion to make immigration reform just another partisan issue.

If immigration reform dies, then activist groups on all sides of the political spectrum live to fight again. In Washington, there can be a perverse disincentive for a real resolution.

And for some in the Beltway, there’s a disincentive to understand what Rubio’s about. Some unwittingly don’t understand Rubio, or they intentionally don’t understand him.

More here

Marco Rubio brings GOP hope with Hispanics but challenges remain

By Alex Leary

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Sorry, Washington superstar, Time magazine coverboy and hip-hop maven, she’s never heard of you.

“Marco Rubio?” said 28-year-old Memorie Annese, taking her daughters to a public library in this city tucked amid soaring mountains and the Rio Grande.

But the Mexican-American, school bus-driving union member who voted for President Barack Obama didn’t hesitate when asked if she would consider a Republican candidate with immigrant roots.

“Heck yeah — if he’s good,” Annese said. “There’s a connection.”

As the Florida senator explores a presidential run, her reaction undercuts Democratic assertions that non-Cuban Hispanics “don’t give a damn about Marco Rubio,” as Obama strategist David Plouffe said recently.

Interviews with voters in Hispanic-rich New Mexico, which Obama won twice, and Texas, a Republican bastion inching Democratic, suggest that Rubio could inspire goodwill and pride among minorities who shunned the GOP in the past two presidential elections.

“Having a president who is Hispanic, I can’t even explain it,” said Esmirna Corona, a college student in El Paso. “If people see Rubio is Hispanic, they’ll take time to check him out. With Mitt Romney, I was like no. Then I looked at his position on immigration and was like definitely not.”

More here.

ICE freed some criminals among immigrants freed in Florida after sequester

By Alfonso Chardy

José López was at the Krome detention center awaiting possible deportation to his native Nicaragua when, on Feb. 26, immigration officials suddenly released him.

Overjoyed, López went home that day to rejoin his family in Miami for the first time since he was first arrested several months ago and deportation proceedings were initiated.

López was one of the 2,228 immigrant detainees recently released nationwide by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who cited the controversial budgetary sequester.

Among those were 225 foreign nationals freed within the jurisdiction of the ICE Miami deportation unit, which includes Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to ICE spokesman Nestor Yglesias.

A federal official familiar with the issue said that 76 of the 225 had criminal convictions, including two who were considered aggravated felons.

While not in detention any longer, these foreign nationals remain under supervised release.

The detainees were released between Feb. 9 and March 1, federal officials in Miami said.

Originally, ICE officials said only a few hundred detained immigrants had been released nationwide. But on March 14, in testimony before a congressional committee in Washington, ICE chief John Morton revealed that the total was higher than had previously been acknowledged.

Morton said the freed detainees included not only undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, but also people convicted of theft, financial crimes and drunk driving.

“In some cases, multiple DUIs,” Morton told a House appropriations subcommittee.

More here.

Marco Rubio's immigration expert draws fire from hardliners

Sen. Marco Rubio's decision to hire immigration lawyer Enrique Gonzalez, a longtime friend and practicing expert in the field, is drawing fire from the conservative Daily Caller (and its readers if you check the comments section):

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s top lawyer in the closed-door effort to draft a new immigration bill is a Democratic donor who earns his living by bringing foreign workers into the country on behalf of corporations and universities.

The lawyer, Enrique Gonzalez, is a partner at the nation’s largest immigration firm, whose future depends on the outcome of Gonzalez’s closed-door work.

Rubio hired Gonzalez in January, when he was a partner at the Coral Gables, Fla., office of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy.

Tampa immigrant moves step closer to Bar admission

 

Jose Gomprez-Samperio, the Tampa man seeking admission to the Florida Bar even though he's not an American citizen, has moved one step closer to realizing his dream. An administrative board that screens all applicants for bar admission has ruled that he is of sound character to practice law. 

The Florida Board of Bar Examiners has notified the Florida Supreme Court of its decision reached at a meeting last weekend that "nothing presently contained in the investigation file will, in and of itself, be considered disqualifying." That double-negative phrasing may not sound significant, but it is especially welcome news to Gomprez-Samperio, an FSU law school graduate who was valedictorian of his senior class at Armwood High in Tampa. 

In an accompanying notice, the board's general counsel, Robert Blythe, wrote: "While this present matter before the Court does not involve Mr. Godinez-Samperio's bar application directly, this supplemental authority is pertinent in that the status of the board's processing Mr. Godinez-Samperio's bar application has been a topic addressed in previous pleadings in the Court."

In Florida, the admission of attorneys to practice law is a judicial responsibility, and the 15-member Board of Bar Examiners screens all candidates for bar admission on character and fitness issues. Applicants must submit proof of good moral character and must pass the bar exam to practice law.

Godinez-Samperio's request for bar admission has been before the state Supreme Court since October. At issue is whether a license to practice law is considered a "public benefit," which a federal law bars undocumented immigrants from receiving.  In the past few months, Godinez-Samperio has received a Social Security card, Florida driver's license and federal approval for a work permit.

-- Steve Bousquet

Jeb Bush: political reporters are "crack addicts"

@MarcACaputo

Welcome to covering Jeb Bush, David Gregory.

On Sunday, the “Meet The Press” host learned that if you ask the former Florida governor a political-gossip question that attempts to pit him against a friend, he’ll parry and thrust.

Gregory: “Who’s the hottest Florida politician right now -- Is it you or [U.S. Sen.] Marco Rubio? Who are we more likely to see in the White House?”

Bush: “Man, you guys are crack addicts. You really are obsessed with all this politics.... Marco Rubio’s a great guy...”

Gregory: “You know, I’ve been called a lot of things…”

Bush: “Okay, heroin addict. Is that better?"

Immigration costs to Miami-Dade schools: $22m annually, report says

‏@NewsbySmiley

As lawmakers in Washington consider changes to immigration laws, Miami-Dade public school officials want them to know just how much their policies are taxing South Florida’s classrooms.

According to a report released last week, the district pays $22 million each year to educate new students who come to South Florida from other countries and enroll in K-12 classes. The report says close to 1,000 new immigrant students enter Miami-Dade classes on average each month — totaling about 11,000 a year — costing about $2,000 more per student than those who come from South Florida and don’t require additional language services.

The “Immigration Impact Briefing,” compiled at the request of Miami-Dade School Board member and Republican political consultant Carlos Curbelo, says the extra $22 million — a conservative estimate — is not reimbursed by federal or state funds. Translation: It comes from Miami-Dade taxpayers.

“This does come at a cost, and the way it happens isn’t in any way ideal,” Curbelo, the son of Cuban parents, said of how federal laws regulate and fund the education of immigrant students."

More here

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/09/3276809_report-immigration-costs-miami.html##storylink=cpy

Jeb Bush on immigration minefield: "a lot of hair on fire right now. Mine isn’t.”

@MarcACaputo

Immigration is a minefield.

Jeb Bush stepped in it.

Bush’s new book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution, exploded on the political scene last week and left the former Florida governor uncharacteristically wobbly over how to legalize the status of the undocumented.

The controversy — and perhaps the book itself — summed up the politics of immigration: laden with political peril, nuance, seeming contradiction and complexity.

The book is also a point of departure for Bush’s political aspirations. He’s neither ruling out nor in a White House bid in 2016.

That invites more political scrutiny than Bush says he realized.

Jeb Bush immigration stance "undercuts" reform effort, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham says

Huffington Post:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the members crafting an immigration bill in the upper chamber, said Tuesday that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's opposition to a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants could damage their effort.

"He has been a great voice on immigration, he has been a good governor, understands the Hispanic community," Graham told reporters. "I just think this proposal caught me off guard, and it undercuts what we're trying to do."

More here

A flip without the flop: Jeb Bush's immigration reversal slight, but still consistent overall

@MarcACaputo

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has reversed himself on immigration when it comes to a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. As the story below points out, he backed his brother's proposal that offered such a path and he had made statements supporting it.

But when you look at the clearest solo statement, Bush always left wiggle room. In an interveiw with Charlie Rose, Bush said he backed a pathway to citizenship OR residency. Conjunctions are important.

“You can’t ignore it, and so either a path to citizenship, which I would support — and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives — or ... a path ... to residency of some kind," Bush said. A Newsday article last year said he backed a path to citizenship, but it had no quotes.

So this doesn't look so much like a flip flop as a flip. It's not so much a zig zag as a zig.

This morning, on Morning Joe, Bush seemed to slightly reverse his slight reversal. That seems to bring him back to where he was before. Here's what he said:

“If you can craft that in law where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally, I'm for it. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know see you do it. But I'm not smart enough to figure out every aspect of a really complex law."

So to recap: Bush had said he was for either a path to citizenship OR residency. Then he said he favored a path to residency because he thought a citizenship-path would be an illegal-immigration magnet. Then he said he was for a path to citizenship if it wasn't an illegal immigration magnet. But he couldn't figure out how that could be.

It's a complex answer to a complex problem. It is nuanced. It is ripe for parsing. And it certainly looks like Bush is trying to please all sides. But then, politicians do that. But then, Bush has held himself up as the no-longer-politician who straight talks instead of giving nuance. Now he's seriously nuanced. He sounds wobbly. That's open season in today's media environment. And TPM didn't miss a beat.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/04/v-fullstory/3266978/jeb-bush-no-citizenship-path-for.html#storylink=cpy

Caveat: Bush said yesterday: "Read the book." I haven't yet (thanks for not sending an advanced copy to your hometown paper). So until we go through it, we're reacting to snippets and reactions to reactions of snippets.

Then there's the matter of Bush running for office in 2016. Previously, folks who knew him and Sen. Marco Rubio Rubio said Bush wasn't seriously considering a bid and Rubio was. But Bush's latest position has them reconsidering how Bush is positioning himself. And some Romney folks just aren't happy.

Here's today's story