MAY 22, 2013

Marco Rubio’s deceptive amnesty ad

CIS fact-checks claims about Senate immigration bill

WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) appears in a television advertisement designed to promote the immigration bill currently being debated in the Senate. The 60-second spot calls the proposal “conservative immigration reform” and is intended to make amnesty appealing to Republican voters. Partisan politics aside, the ad is misleading on a number of counts, as outlined in a new Center for Immigration Studies analysis.

The ad was produced by “Americans for a Conservative Direction”, the Republican front group of the "FWD.us" lobbying organization, founded by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. The ad includes a number of misleading claims, including that the bill has “tough border triggers” and “no giveaways for law breakers”. At one point, Sen. Rubio claims the bill "puts in place the toughest enforcement measures in the history of the United States, potentially in the world."

The CIS analysis of the ad is at: http://cis.org/rubio-deceptive-amnesty-ad.

“Rubio makes many strong claims in the TV ad, but he’s selling a bill that doesn’t exist," said Jon Feere, Legal Policy Analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies. "Some of his claims are simply incorrect, while some of the provisions he highlights are swallowed by the bill’s many waivers, exemptions, and grants of discretion to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano."

The CIS analysis examines each statement in the ad and concludes that the amnesty bill currently being debated by the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” is far from the “tough line on immigration” that Rubio claims it to be.

View the Senate bill, CIS Senate testimony and commentary