Byron York: A Few Questions for Sen. Rubio About Immigration And Amnesty

Columnist Byron York notes that Sen. Marco Rubio has not been asked any questions about his greatest legislative triumph — the 2013 Senate passage of his immigration and amnesty bill.

So the Washington Examiner’s writer suggests a few gentle questions for Rubio that should be asked at the Tuesday night CNN-sponsored debate in Las Vegas.

Rubio still has not faced those Gang of Eight questions. And if he’s not asked in Las Vegas, there won’t be another chance until after the new year, when the next GOP debate takes place in Iowa. So, just in case [CNN anchor Wolf] Blitzer or his colleagues are inclined to bring up immigration Tuesday night, here are five questions Rubio might be asked:

1) Recently Pew Research asked Americans whether immigration should be “kept at its present level, increased, or decreased.” Very small minorities — just 7 percent of Republicans, 17 percent of independents, and 20 percent of Democrats — support increasing immigration. Yet the Congressional Budget Office found that your Gang of Eight bill would have raised immigration levels significantly, increasing the U.S. population in the next decade by an estimated 10 million people over the increase that would already occur if current law remains unchanged. Why did you do that?…

4) Your bill would have quickly legalized most illegal immigrants in the United States. Before the bill was released, you claimed that permanent legal status for them would come only after extensive border security measures were put in place. When the bill came out, though, it specified that permanent legal status would be conferred even if the security conditions had not been met. Why the change?…