I assume you all remember that, in 2013, Marco Rubio helped craft a comprehensive immigration reform bill—one that included a path to citizenship for the undocumented—and then voted against it. Now, his presidential campaign’s website has a page on immigration with the title “Secure the Border First.” That, apparently, is his ‘plan’ as well as his argument, i.e., we can’t have comprehensive immigration reform until the border is ‘secure.’
As a recent report from Pew indicates, the ball is now in Senator Rubio’s court:
Last year, the number of Mexicans caught crossing the border illegally — an imperfect but still widely used indicator of overall illegal crossings — dropped to 230,000, according to official figures, the lowest since 1971.
The end of the influx has led to a decline in the numbers of Mexican immigrants in the United States, Pew reported, to 11.7 million in 2014, down from a peak of 12.8 million in 2007. Most of the decline can be attributed to a drop in the number of Mexicans here illegally, to 5.6 million last year from an estimated 6.9 million in 2007. Mexicans are by far the largest nationality among undocumented immigrants.
That’s right. The border is as secure as it has been since before Watergate. Furthermore, if we look at overall immigration from Mexico, the report finds a net outflow of approximately 140,000 people from 2009 through 2014.
Even if we take Rubio’s argument seriously—and forget the fact that his hypocritical flip-flop on comprehensive immigration reform was motivated purely by a desire to position himself more effectively with Republican primary voters—this new data shows that the border is pretty damn secure.
So, Marco, now are you ready to work toward comprehensive immigration reform? Personally, I’m not holding my breath.