In a stump speech earlier this week in Iowa, Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Marco Rubio presented a hard-line stance on immigration and slammed the government's policy of granting "fiancé visas" to foreign nationals.
He said at the Jan. 5 townhall in Cedar Rapids that terrorists are now exploiting this visa program and cited last month's San Bernardino attack as an example. Tashfeen Malik, one of the two attackers who killed 14 Americans at a Christmas party, had entered the U.S. on a K-1 visa from Saudi Arabia as the fiancée of fellow jihadist Syed Farook. The K-1 visa is commonly referred to as the "fiancé visa."
"It is first and foremost now a national security issue. Because there are radical jihadist groups and one in particular, ISIS, that are looking deliberately and systematically to exploit our immigration system, to get killers into our country," Rubio told his audience of about 150 Iowans. "In fact, they’ve already succeeded in at least one person (Malik). Who knew there was a fiancé visa? Most Americans didn't."
Watch video clip of Sen. Marco Rubio's comment about the fiancé visa.
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But Rubio did. In fact, he tried to greatly expand the fiancé visa program.
Rubio, as many forget, co-authored the 2013 immigration-reform bill that many conservatives called "amnesty." Rubio's bill would have extended the fiancé visa to immigrants living in the U.S. as "lawful permanent residents," meaning they are in America lawfully on green cards but are not U.S. citizens.
Rubio's so-called Gang of Eight legislation passed the Senate but died in the House.
Rubio acknowledged at this week's townhall that the issue has "completely changed" since 2013 but, according to a Wall Street Journal report, he refused to take questions afterward on whether he had changed his mind about expanding the controversial fiancé visa.
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The U.S. issued 36,000 fiancé visas to foreign nationals last year, according to State Department data.
But only foreigners engaged to be married to a U.S. citizen can apply for the K-1 visa. A green-card holder can only apply to have a spouse brought to the U.S., not a fiancé.
If this privilege were extended to green-card holders, it would potentially open up the flood gates to tens of thousands more immigrants who, as the case of Malik proves, are only lightly screened.
The Wall Street Journal's Reid Epstein reported that Rubio refused to answer follow-up questions on the issue.
Rubio told Iowa voters no candidate knows the immigration issue better than he does.
"There is no one running for president now or in recent memory who understands the issue, and personally, better than I do,” he said during his stump speech to 150 people here.
"So it was a little jarring when, a minute later, he pivoted to tie his new hawkish stance on immigration to the threat of terrorism and said terror groups are seeking to 'exploit our immigration system to get killers into our country,'" Epstein reported, and it was even more surprising that he would single out the fiancé visa for special concern, since he wanted to expand the issuance of such visas exponentially.
"Of course I knew," he said when questioned by reporters after his speech. “Obviously, people who are involved in the immigration debate know that it exists, but the vast majority of Americans were not aware that there was such a thing as the fiancé visa."
He didn’t respond to follow-up questions asking if he regretted expanding access to fiancé visas in the 2013 legislation.
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