DeMint Goes After Rubio’s Immigration Measure

After endorsing Marco Rubio in the Florida Republican Senate primary in June 2009, former senator Jim DeMint is now opposing the comprehensive immigration bill that Rubio helped author.

As the new president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Washington, DeMint is calling the proposed bipartisan immigration law introduced on Wednesday “amnesty” with “lofty promises.”

DeMint argues that the proposed law offered in the Senate is very similar to the amnesty bill passed in 1986 granting citizenship to 3 million illegal immigrants, which he argues backfired because “the border wasn’t secured, workplace laws were not enforced, and our legal immigration system was not fixed.”

“Rather than rewarding the 11 million who broke our laws, Congress should first consider how to make the immigration system work for the more than 4 million people waiting patiently outside our borders to come to our country legally,” DeMint wrote.

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He also argues that the immigration law would put further financial constraints on the already struggling federal government.

“The Senate bill imposes significant costs on taxpayers,” DeMint wrote. “At a time of trillion-dollar deficits and $17 trillion in debt, the cost of implementing amnesty and the strain it will add to already fragile entitlement and welfare programs should be of serious concern for everyone.”

Rubio argued while appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the new law will make the border more secure and that it all it will do is allow illegal immigrants access to the legal immigration system.

“We are going to get the toughest enforcement measures in the history of this country,” Rubio said. And there will be “consequences for having violated the laws.”