Rubio: A Lot of Democrats Want ‘to Turn a Bunch of Illegal Immigrants into Voters’

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “a lot of Democrats” wanted to “turn a bunch of illegal immigrants into voters” with their immigration policies.

Partial transcript as follows:

TAPPER: Let’s talk about this deal negotiated by Senators Lankford, Murphy, and Sinema. I understand that you have issues with it. A lot of people have issues with it. The National Border Patrol Council, which is the union for Border Patrol agents, which is a very conservative group, they support this legislation.

I want you to take a listen to the head of that union, Brandon Judd.

BRANDON JUDD, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL BORDER PATROL COUNCIL: I’m going to look at, is this bill better than the status quo? And it absolutely is. Nobody can argue that. Nobody can argue that it’s not better than what we currently have. Although it’s not perfect, it is a step in the right direction.And I  would rather have the step in the right direction than nothing.

TAPPER: Now, I know you know Brandon Judd, but, for viewers, this is the head of a union that endorsed Trump strongly in 2020, consistently criticize President Biden. Go check out their Twitter feed. They mock him all the time. They say this is better than nothing; it should become law. Are you saying that the Border Patrol Union is wrong?

RUBIO: Yes. If that’s what they still believe, they’re wrong. It’s not better than nothing. Look, there are some things in that bill that we should do, change the asylum standard and the like. Here’s what else the bill did. The bill basically creates an asylum corps, OK? It creates a bunch of — thousands of bureaucrats, basically agents, asylum agents, that would be empowered right at the border to either allow people into the country with an immediate work permit. Today, they got to wait six months. You give them an immediate work permit, you’re going to have more people coming. That’s a huge magnet. Or they have the power to immediately release them and grant them asylum, which now puts them on a five-year path to citizenship, which is what a lot of Democrats want. They want to turn a bunch of illegal immigrants into voters, into citizens, into voters, in the hopes that those people will then turn around and vote for them in future elections, grateful because they will know who let them in.

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