Marco Rubio Takes to the Senate Floor to Add More Border Security to Immigration Bill

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl, took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to explain why he is backing an amendment to the immigration reform bill ensuring that residential provisional immigrants (RPIs) need to be proficient in English to receive a green card. Rubio weighed on the idea earlier in the day and even appeared on the Mike Gallagher radio show to promote it.

I filed an amendment to improve it even further, Rubio said about his change to the immigration reform bill. Im saying that when you apply for that green card, after the ten-year period and more has expired, youre going to have to prove that youre proficient in English because I think that assimilation is important. Because I think assimilating into American society is important. I think learning English is not just important for assimilation, its important for economic success. You cannot flourish in our economy, you cannot flourish in our country if youre not proficient in English. And were going to require that at the green card stage. Now, whats the debate going to be about here over the next few weeks? Well, a couple of things are going to have to happen. First, like any other bill, there are some technical changes that are going to have to be made, and those will be made. I think there will be improvements to the bill on other issues like what I have just talked about, this amendment that I have to make English proficiency required at the green card stage. Then I think were going to move on and have a debate about the costs of this bill and ensuring that we truly tighten this.

Rubio also played up a familiar theme--American exceptionalism--as he continued his speech.

I refuse to accept the idea that the most powerful country on earth, the nation that put a man on the moon, is incapable of securing its own border, Rubio said. Our sovereignty is at stake in terms of border security. Border security is not an anti-immigration or an anti-immigrant measure. It is an important national security measure but it is also an important defense of our sovereignty, and we must protect our borders.

Rubio also offered a look at the GOP caucus and tried to give them some conservative cover for supporting his bill.

Now I personally believe that more than half of my colleagues on the Republican side, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, want to vote for an immigration bill, Rubio said. They want to modernize our legal immigration system, they want to improve our enforcement mechanisms, and they want to deal with the 11 million people that are here illegally. But they are only willing to do that if they can go back to their folks back at home and say, We took steps in this bill to make sure this will never happen again. We didnt repeat the mistakes of the past. This isnt going to happen again. Thats going to be the key to this bill passing. And I think that we can do that. And thats in our principles, by the way. The guiding principles before this bill was unveiled talked about border security. One of the ways I think we can improve that is by not leaving the border and fence plan to chance. Lets not leave it to the Department of Homeland Security. Lets put the specific plan in the bill, the number of fences, the amount of technology. Lets mandate it in the bill, so that were not leaving it to guesswork. So that when you vote for this bill, you are voting for a specific security plan.