Republican Senator Rand Paul Says GOP Must Get ‘Beyond Deportation’ To Appeal To Hispanic Voters

Politico reports that Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky who is expected to become a presidential hopeful in 2016, told conservatives at an event on Tuesday that the GOP needed to “get beyond deportation” in order to broaden its appeal among Hispanic voters. “The bottom line is the Hispanic community, the Latino community, is not going to care until we get beyond this issue,” he said. “They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church or have the same values or believe in the same kind of future of our country until we get beyond that.”

Paul voted against the comprehensive immigration reform bill which passed the Senate last June after failing to garner support for a slew of amendments. Among them were proposals which would have lifted all caps on guest workers and cut out the bill’s path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already living in the US, instead routing them into the heavily backlogged usual channels for green cards and citizenship. In February 2013, he published an op-ed in the Washington Times arguing for ramped-up border-control measures of the sort called for by the Senate bill’s $46 billion “border surge” amendment.

But in Paul’s version of immigration legislation, he wrote, not only would “Border Security, including drones, satellite, and physical barriers, vigilant deportation of criminals and increased patrols … begin immediately,” but his plan would mandate that Congress approve of progress on border security before undocumented immigrants could benefit from other reforms.

The Kentucky senator added on Tuesday that he believed Congress could still pass immigration reform this year even after House Republican leaders backed off of it early in 2014 amid reluctance -- and sometimes outright antipathy -- from much of the party’s rank-and-file. Paul pointed to the expansion of work and high-tech visas as one possible area where an agreement could be negotiated by Republicans and Democrats. “I think there could still be something done this year,” he said.