Senator Marco Rubio is the rising star of the Republican Party. He is seen as the best hope to bring Hispanic voters back to the party they abandoned in the 2008 election, in which, almost two-thirds voted for Barack Obama. But in the 2012 elections things might be different, Senator Rubio is trying to persuade the Latino voters that Mitt Romney would not follow the Arizona example, referring to the immigration law. That’s why he has become a serious option for vice president, and, who knows, if in the future he might be an option for president.

It seems that Mr. Rubio wants to show the world that the Republican Party would be more permissive with illegal immigrants. This is an important move, because if the Republicans are unable to convince the Hispanic population to vote for Romney they could lose crucial states like Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

Mitt Romney knows it and trusts that Mr. Rubio would be the man who would balance the forces and bring back the Hispanic vote to the Republican Party. In recent declarations Senator Rubio criticized the Democrat Party position over immigration, he stated that ” there are many in the Democratic Party that want immigration to be unsolved issue at least for the time being, because it’s more useful as a campaign issue than it is as a solved issue.”

The Hispanic Vote has become crucial in this election; it forced Mitt Romney to change the position he had in the primaries, in which he criticized Governor Rick Perry for granting in-State tuition to Texas universities to immigrants, to a much more permissive posture, in which he said he would consider a new version of the Dream Act. Congress voted down the Act in 2012, which supposedly will be proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio.

Senator Rubio is in favor of giving nonimmigrant visas to young illegals that were brought to the United States by a certain date, a date that for now is unknown, as long as they have graduated from high school and haven’t committed any crime. Andrea Saul, a spokesman for Mitt Romney’s campaign, said: “Governor Romney will study and consider any proposal on immigration from his republican partners,” to show that Senator Rubio’s proposals will be heard.

President Obama also knows of how crucial the Hispanic vote will be in this election, that’s why a few weeks ago he passed the Dream Act by an executive order, this will temporally make almost 800,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children safe from deportation. This does not mean these individuals can apply for their citizenship. Senator Rubio criticized president Obama´s action affirming that it was “an election-year action that in the long-term is going to have negative consequences.”

The battle to gain the support from the Hispanic voters has begun. Both parties know very well how crucial this segment of the population will be in the November election. A recent Gallup shows that president Obama has over 65% of Hispanic voters support. So now we just have to wait and see if the Republican Party is able to regain their trust. They have already chosen Marco Rubio to fulfill this difficult task; if he succeeds, there is a big chance that in the future he might become the Republican candidate for the White House.

Image Courtesy of  Gage Skidmore

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About the author

Gerardo Jose Torres Montalvo
Student of Philosophy and Journalism in Universidad de Navarra, Spain. Interested in world politics, especially in Latin American issue and in political philosophy. I was born in the United States, but raised in El Salvador.

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