Switcherubio

By Mustang Bobby.

Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio was initially "concerned" about the Arizona immigration bill. But once the legislation was tweaked to fix the window-dressing to make it look racially-neutral, he told an interviewer at Human Events that he's all in favor of it.

JM: If you were in the Arizona state legislature, would you have voted for the law?

MR: The second one that passed hit the right note. Yes.

JM: The first time around, would you have?

MR: Well, I would have wanted to see changes like the ones that were made because I know that that's not the intent of the bill. We're always concerned. I mean no one is in favor of a bill that would force American citizens to have to interact with law enforcement in a way that wasn't appropriate. And the first bill I thought held that door open.

Since then, the changes that have been made to the bill I think greatly improve it.

Those changes actually expand the scope under which a police officer could investigate someone's citizenship status:

As part of the amended bill, a police officer responding to city ordinance violations would also be required to determine the immigration status of an individual they have reasonable suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant.

City ordinance violations include things like loud parties, littering, or watering your lawn during restricted hours. And that's okay for Marco Rubio, who as a conservative, is against big government intrusion. Yeah, okay.

Mr. Rubio also rejects allowing illegal immigrants become legal.

Rubio also rejected the notion of a "path to citizenship" or "amnesty," despite "the human stories."

"There are going to be stories of very young kids that were brought to this country at a very young age who don't even speak Spanish that are going to be sent back to Nicaragua or some other place. And it's gonna feel weird and I understand that," he said, suggesting that those hardships would be a price worth paying.

Mr. Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants, a group who to this day still get frontsies in the citizenship line thanks to the "wet foot/dry foot" law. So either Mr. Rubio is doing his best to suck up to the tea party base that really doesn't think brown people are entitled to anything, or he's a flaming "I Got Mine Screw You" hypocrite. Or both.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)