Sen. Marco Rubio may have ideas to use the upcoming budget vote to dissuade President Barack Obama from taking executive action on immigration reform.
"There will have to be some sort of budget vote or a Continuing Resolution vote, so I assume there will be some sort of a vote on this," the Florida senator told Breitbart News. The vote must come before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. "I'm interested to see what kinds of ideas my colleagues have about using funding mechanisms to address this issue."
Obama has considered taking executive action to scale back on deportations of illegal immigrants. The president "is going to do what he can... under the confines of the law" by the end of the summer, White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on ABC's "This Week" earlier this month.
Republicans and some conservative Democrats believe that decision "should be addressed legislatively, and not through executive order," Sen. Kay Hagan told The Wall Street Journal.
The president already awarded amnesty to individuals who entered the U.S. illegally as minors through the 2012 memorandum, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Rubio wants this program to eventually end.
"At some point, the DACA program has to come to an end - it cannot be the permanent way forward on this issue," he told Breitbart. "I'm willing to be reasonable about when it comes to an end, whether it be two years, one year, six months, three [years] - but it has to come to an end. It cannot be the indefinite policy of the United States."
The Florida senator previously supported comprehensive immigration reform and introduced a bipartisan proposal with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer from New York in January 2013. Rubio recently backed away from that position until the U.S. could secure its borders.
"It has to be a sequence," Rubio told Breitbart. "The sequence begins by trying to get under control the illegal immigration problem. People aren't going to be willing to do anything else on immigration until they believe illegal immigration is under control."
He also wants a legal immigration system based on merit, a person's skills and talent, rather than if a person has a relative in the country.
"Only after you've done those two things do I believe you can have a serious and responsible conversation about how to address those who are here illegally who have been here for a long period of time," Rubio said.
