Mitt Romney quietly told supporters the other day that he’d like to see a “Republican DREAM Act” to help his party with Latino voters. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who’s talking more and more about immigration policy, believes he has just such a proposal.
Hoping to boost his party’s image with Hispanic voters, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) launched a one-man push Thursday to promote a modified version of legislation to benefit undocumented children whose parents brought them to this nation.
Repeatedly denying any interest in being the vice presidential nominee, Rubio used a pair of appearances Thursday to push legislation based around the “DREAM Act,” a bill that Democrats have promoted to offer a path to citizenship for underage illegal immigrants who go on to college or into the military.
Rubio’s working draft of similar legislation would grant legal immigration status to such children who were brought to the United States illegally by their parents. It would require that they graduated from college or served honorably in the military.
So, what’s the problem? It depends on your perspective. For the left, this is a DREAM Act without the dream — Rubio’s version offers no pathway to citizenship. The conservative senator has admitted as much, saying, “You can legalize someone’s status without placing them on a path toward citizenship.” Rubio has said he doesn’t want to help these immigrants become citizens for fear that they might — que horror — sponsor family members for legal immigration later.
For the right, there’s a very different kind of concern. It’s generally called the “Kobach test,” named after Mitt Romney’s right-wing immigration adviser, Kris Kobach, who’s helped shape anti-immigrant laws.
For Kobach, proposals are necessarily “unacceptable” if undocumented immigrants receive any kind of legal status, even if it falls short of citizenship.
Does Rubio’s watered down, GOP-friendly version of the DREAM Act pass the “test”? Rubio says it does, but his friends on the right disagree.
Greg Sargent talked yesterday to Crytsal Williams, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, who









