Jose Penalosa on UNIVISION asking Marco Rubio to get on right side of immigration issue

Please view Joe Penalosa on UNIVISION asking Marco Rubio to get on the right side of the immigration issue.  Please fast forward to the 2:20 minute mark of the video. The UNIVISION interview Jose was sparked due to our letter we sent to Rubio’s office.

See letter below:

OPEN LETTER FROM SOMOS REPUBLICANS DATED July 12, 2011

We were disappointed to hear about Senator Marco Rubio’s brother in law who was endicted on drug charges also implicated on the death and dismemberment of a federal informant in Florida. We know that this occurred several years ago, however, and as you might be aware, Rubio has taken a hard line stance on immigration when he opted to support Arizona’s SB 1070 (anti-immigrant law) last year. The quote that struck a nerve with us is when he attributed his support for the unConstitutional anti-immigrant law due to “public safety” and his concern with “Mexican Drug violence”.

It was unfair for Rubio and other politicians to blame the situation solely upon on Mexican drug violence. The source of drugs comes from all over the world, not just Mexico, and this should have been evident with regard to Marco Rubio’s personal experiences in Florida with what occurred to his sister’s family.

We would like to see the Senator retract his statement that drug violence stems from “just Mexico” because this is not just a “Mexican problem”, and we ask that he correctly acknowledges that drugs come from other countries, too, and drug violence is performed by “legal citizens” — not just immigrants. We know that “legal citizens” and drugs come from other countries, too. In fact, Census data show that immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than their native-born counterparts. Marco Rubio’s statements with regard to our trading partner — Mexico, adds to xenophobic ideas as we continue to fight for legal immigration and fixing a clearly broken immigration system. “Legal citizens” are involved in drug violence, bribery and deaths as such was the case in Florida. Drugs come from other parts of the world and wind up in non-border states and their ports of entry (like Florida) where drug activity is fueled by native born citizens.

We would also like to see Rubio retract his support for Lamar Smith’s national e-verify plans unless a complete legal immigration overhaul system has taken place. There are millions of undocumented individuals who are not drug traffickers, but are hard workers and contributors to our American society. It does not make sense to add another level of government bureaucracy while embracing protectionist-only ideas particularly when the State of Florida recently rejected their e-verify and 287(g) – enforcement only policy bill. The enforcement only approach on immigration does not work, because it does nothing to create “new taxpayers” that our economy needs to sustain future entitlements such as social security, medicare and medicaid.

Please tell the Senator to retract his statement and support for Arizona’s SB 1070 type of laws and enforcement only policies, besides SB 1070 was basically deemed unConstitutional. We need a complete legal immigration overhaul. This will help us against the perception with the xenophobes that “just Mexico is bad”, and only immigrants participate in drug violence.

Thank you.