From AILA:

Deferred Action PSAs

Cite as “AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 13032744 (posted Mar. 27, 2013)”

Arizona photographer, Sam Gomez, holds up photograph of man climbing Mexican border wall.

Tuesday evening, Friday 12, 2013,  Mexican-Americans will be listening to Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio’s State of the Union response on immigration.

Here are the things we will be listening for:

1.  Whether or not Rubio retracts his support for Arizona’s SB 1070 law that has harmed thousands of families and our economy in Arizona.

2.  Whether or not Rubio defers strong leadership to Border State elected officials in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. Will Rubio mention Latin Elected Officials in Texas since Texas has the largest border length, and since Texas knows the ins and outs of border problems and solutions?

3.  Why didn’t Rubio support the DREAM Act in December 2010 when we needed him the most?  Is it because Florida turned ‘blue‘ during the 2012 Presidential election cycle?  Rubio has to support immigration if he does not want to be a one-term Senator.  [This could also explain why we witnessed 'yellow' bellies regarding the Texas GOP leaders Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen John Cornyn (with regard to Super 8 on CIR) because Texas is still 'red' in Presidential cycles.]

I don’t think Rubio  wants to go down in history as being a one-term Senator….and he has to fix the immigration damage he caused since 2010 when he did NOT support the DREAM Act.   If Rubio really cares about the solutions to the border problems….the speech will not be just about himself…he will divert attention to the Border state leaders in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Califas. Keep in mind that ‘Hispanic’ Texas Senator Ted Cruz was not part of the Immigration (Super Eight) leadership even though Texas is the state with the LARGEST border length in the country.

In the meantime, I want to share an op-ed by David Leopold who is the immediate past President of AILA.

Rubio’s State of the Union Response: An Historic Opportunity to Lead

“….But Rubio has an opportunity to do much more than mend fences for the Republicans. He has an historic chance to show he is not a merely a politician tasked by party elders to reach out to a disgruntled constituency, but a statesman. He can embody the bipartisan leadership in Congress that our nation needs: senators and representatives who are willing to put politics aside and partner with President Obama in an effort to fix the dysfunctional mess of an immigration system that plagues America, tearing families apart and stifling the economy. He can be the courageous leader the GOP needs, one with the guts to wrench his party out of the dark corner of the anti-immigrant fringe and into an enlightened national conversation on immigration reform. ….

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a loud and clear voice, blocked three key pillars of the Arizona law — the provisions making it a crime for immigrants to fail to register under a federal law, making it a crime for undocumented immigrants to work or solicit work, and allowing the police to arrest people without warrants if they have probable cause to believe that they have done things that would make them deportable under federal law. This is a significant blow to the guts of the Arizona immigration statute and its impact will be felt across the country in other states — most notably Alabama and Georgia, which have enacted similar anti-immigrant provisions.

And the Court didn’t mince words. It made abundantly clear that immigration law is a federal matter and states should keep their hands off. Using strong language it said that these provisions were clearly preempted by federal law because they stand as obstacles to the enforcement of immigration law as enacted by Congress. The subtext of the Court’s decision is that if each state were permitted to enact its own immigration enforcement scheme, then there would be little need for a federal government; the United States would, in effect, cease to be united under a national authority. As the Court said,

Federal law makes a single sovereign responsible for maintaining a comprehensive and unified system to keep track of aliens within the Nation’s borders. If §3 of the Arizona statute were valid, every State could give itself independent authority to prosecute federal registration violations, ‘diminish[ing] the [Federal Government]‘s control over enforcement’ and ‘detract[ing] from the ‘integrated scheme of regulation’ created by Congress.  FULL STORY HERE>>>