Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter on Wednesday attacked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as “amazingly naïve” and “nuts” on immigration and blasted the bipartisan reform proposal announced this week by senators as “ridiculous.”
“I love and respect Marco. I think he’s just amazingly naïve on this issue,” Vitter said of his fellow Republican on “The Laura Ingraham Show” The interview was
reported by Politico.
“This is the same old formula that we’ve dealt with before, including when it passed in 1986, and that is promises of enforcement and immediate amnesty,” Vitter told Ingraham. “And of course, the promises of enforcement never materialize.
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“The amnesty happens immediately — the millisecond the bill is signed into law — and the same is true here. No, they won’t be citizens immediately. They will be legal.”
“Citizenship is guaranteed at that point as a practical matter,” Vitter added.
And if Rubio does not think that legal status could lead to citizenship, “he’s nuts,” Vitter said.
“Look, as soon as you give these people a legal status, to say that you’re going to reverse that is ridiculous,” he told Ingraham. “It’ll never happen. As soon as you give them a legal status, they are here legally forever and probably they’re citizens pretty darn soon after.
“And if Marco thinks no matter what happens or doesn’t happen on the enforcement side that’s not going to happen, I just think he’s nuts.”
Vitter labeled Rubio’s declaration that he would not support legislation without strong border controls “ridiculous,” given that Barack Obama is president.
“It’s particularly ridiculous to say, ‘We really mean it this time, enforcement is going to happen under President Obama,’” Vitter said. “It didn’t happen under Reagan, but it’s going to happen under President Obama?”
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