Marco Rubio, GOP Leaders: We’ll ‘Absolutely’ Try Again on Amnesty if We Gain Control of Senate

Photo Credit: AFPConservatives who believe that winning back control of the Senate will destroy any chance of amnesty legislation passing are sorely mistaken. In fact, a Republican-controlled Congress may make it easier to provide a path to citizenship for all of the country’s illegal immigrants if this Congress fails to do so.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who has his eye on the GOP presidential nomination and was the central figure who backed the Senate’s amnesty bill that passed last year, said that Republicans in the Senate would “absolutely” take up amnesty legislation again if they gain a net of six seats to take back the upper chamber. He indicated that piecemeal or bite-sized bills would be better than his Gang of Eight amnesty bill that he championed and which faced stiff resistance from House conservatives.

If Republicans retain the House, that would mean GOP leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who would become Majority Leader, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) may promptly abandon the conservative base to strike a deal on amnesty legislation.

Rubio conceded that he did not “think a comprehensive bill can pass,” but emphasized that he did not “want us to waste another two years on an approach that has no chance of passing.”

“I certainly think we can make progress on immigration, particularly on topics like modernizing our legal immigration system [and] improving our mechanisms for enforcing the law, and I think if you did those things you could actually make some progress on addressing those who are illegally,” Rubio said on Wednesday, according to The Hill.

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