Rubio calls Clinton comments on immigration ‘silly talk’

CEDAR RAPIDS - Florida Sen. Marco Rubio rejected Hillary Clinton's assessment that Republicans are hostile toward immigrants as 'silly talk” while campaigning in Cedar Rapids Wednesday.

'She's the one who didn't even want to give them driver's licenses when she ran for president,” Rubio said when asked about the former secretary of state's comments that the GOP presidential candidates are 'on a spectrum of hostility, which I think is really regrettable in a nation of immigrants like ours.”

Rubio predicted Clinton would 'continue to say silly things like that, I imagine, because she feels the heat from the left.”

Rubio also criticized GOP rival Donald Trump for his comments about immigrants, but said that unlike Clinton, voters hear the difference in the way the Republicans talk about immigration and immigration reform.

'I think voters are capable of distinguishing the Republican Party from Donald Trump,” Rubio told reporters. 'He'll have to respond for his own comments. They're inaccurate, they're offensive and they are divisive.”

However, Rubio, who didn't mention immigration in remarks to more than 150 people at the Cedar Rapids Country Club, said there is an illegal immigration problem that will not be solved until border security is improved to control illegal immigration.

'I mean we're a sovereign country. We have a right to enforce our immigration laws,” said Rubio, who also attended a poolside 'happy hour” at the home of Taylor and Gwen Parker in Coralville. 'That's not hostility. That's sovereignty.”

His comments would have been welcomed by DeEtta Andersen of Center Point, who thought his 21-minute stumps speech sounded 'like the introduction to a textbook - and he skipped the chapter on immigration, which is the juiciest.”

However, Dan Hess of Cedar Rapids was impressed that Rubio was willing to talk about immigration 'in a realistic way.”

'He understands that border security is more than an immigration issue, it's a national security issue, too,” he said.

In Iowa City Tuesday, Clinton also called for immigration reform, but also condemned the GOP candidates for trying to 'demean immigrants, insult immigrants, cast aspersions on immigrants,” many who have earned the right to stay

'We've always prided ourselves on being a nation of immigrants,” she said during comments at the Iowa City Public Library. 'Then I hear the Republican candidates, and it's not only the ones who are the most vitriolic, none of them any longer support a pathway to citizenship. They would consign immigrants to second-class status.”

Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba, said he views immigrants as an asset.

'We're engaged in a global competition for talent and we have to have a legal immigration system that allows us to win that competition,” he said. He called for a merit-based system for allowing immigrants into the country, an entry/exit tracking system to prevent visa overstays and an 'effective, workable e-verify system.”

Hess hasn't settled on a GOP candidate, but said Rubio 'moved the needle” for him.

'He's at the top of my short list … he's a true conservative, not Democrat light,” Hess said.

Andersen, a fiscal conservative, has heard all of the GOP candidates, but hasn't committed to any one of them

'I'm always kicking the tires,” she said.