Marco Rubio Urges an Immigration Policy Based on the ‘National Interest’

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) on Thursday proposed a reframing of the national immigration debate that will accommodate the reality of America’s great-power competition with China.

Rubio, who was joined onstage by Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam, explained to the audience at National Review Institute’s 2019 Ideas summit that America must recalibrate its immigration system to prioritize highly skilled workers, whose presence in the U.S. will fuel innovation.

Immigration, Rubio said, should be treated like any other policy in that its formation should “reflect our national priorities.”

“We can’t afford to leave any Americans behind because China has three times as many people as we do. . . . So we need all hands on deck,” Rubio said before explaining why our current, family-based immigration system is woefully inadequate to the task of facilitating American dynamism.

Confronted with the criticism — often level by proponents of open borders — that any restriction on immigration constitutes immoral discrimination, Rubio argued that the current system, like any realistic immigration system, discriminates; it simply does so in a counterproductive manner.