(Credit: AP)

A top anti-immigration advocate referred to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) using a homophobic slur during an appearance on the Laura Ingraham radio show on Thursday.

Mark Krikorian, the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, argued that Rubio is critical to building Republican support for reform, but is either misleading lawmakers about the bill or is unaware of the provisions included in the measure.

“Without Rubio, there is no bill, I mean, it just can’t happen,” Krikorian said, “because Rubio’s job basically was to be the beard for this bill.” The phrase “beard” became popularized in the 1960s to describe a woman helping a man hide his homosexuality.

The Center for Immigration Studies was established by John Tanton, a strict a nativist who once wrote a paper titled “The Case for Passive Eugenics” and has openly professed his preference for white people. CIS has produced reports with racist undertones and Krikorian himself has jokingly suggested that immigrants are responsible for the subprime mortgage meltdown.

In 2007, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Michigan State University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a group that had posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus.

(Credit: CNN)

“Their argument is based on a single premise, which I think is flawed,” Rubio told reporters. “That is these people are disproportionately poor because they have no education and they will be poor for the rest of their lives in the U.S. Quite frankly that’s not the immigration experience in the U.S. That’s certainly not my family’s experience in the U.S. The folks described in that report are my family. My mother and dad didn’t graduate high school and I would not say they were a burden on the United States…My parents were a lot better off 25 years after they emigrated here than they were when they first got here. And their children certainly have been. I still think we’re that country. And I still think we can be that country and even more in the future, so I guess I just have a lot more belief in the future of the country than some of the folks that helped prepare [the report].”

Indeed, the Heritage study ignores immigrants’ gains in wages and education after legalization, preferring to categorize all immigrants as “takers” who will be permanently dependent on the government.

Rubio’s heated critique of the Heritage study highlights widening divides in the GOP over immigration. In the past, Rubio has called Heritage president and former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) his best friend, according to the New York Times. But now, DeMint has vowed to work against Rubio’s pet cause. Rubio has stated before that their disagreement over immigration “is never going to change how I feel about Jim DeMint, and hopefully doesn’t change how he feels about me.” Today, he pointedly added, “Anyone who opposes this bill but fails to offer a real and specific alternative is in favor of the status quo.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Wednesday suggested that, given the attack on Boston carried out by two immigrants, he would consider barring young foreign Muslims from getting student visas to come the United States.

Prompted by host Neil Cavuto to address how the attack by the Tsarnaev brothers — neither of whom came to the country on student visas — had influenced immigration reform, Rubio said that he was willing to consider Fox News Host Bob Beckel’s suggestion that anyone who observes Islam should not get a student visa:

CAVUTO: Senator, there are some getting leery of all the Muslim students in America. Bob Beckel is among those saying stop grants visas, others speaking about slowing down the number getting into the country. What do you think?

RUBIO: We need to be open to changes that provide more security. I don’t like profiling anybody or singling or generally leading, on the other hand student visas are something this country does because it’s in our national interest but you don’t have a right to a student visa. I’m not prepared to take a firm position on restriction. I want to learn about what might have worked to prevent past attacks.

Islamophobia has been pervasive in the responses to last week’s attack on Boston. Some members of Congress, along with conservative political spokespeople, have said the attack underlines that Islam is a religion of violence, or that Muslim communities have influenced violent jihad. In fact, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was kicked out of his mosque for using violent rhetoric, and the Muslim community in Toronto recently worked with authorities to help stop a terrorist attack.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned on Wednesday that President Obama could unilaterally legalize millions of undocumented immigrants if Congress does not pass a bipartisan immigration bill offered by the so-called Gang of 8.

Appearing on the nationally syndicated “The Mark Levin Show” — one of many conservative talk radio interviews the senator is granting to pitch his immigration proposal — Rubio argued that if lawmakers fail to reform the system in the way he has proposed, “bad people” like President Barack Obama will be able to losen immigration laws and undermine America’s border security:

RUBIO: If we don’t do anything, then the status quo remains, which is they won’t do anything. You won’t have E-Verify, you won’t have…. In fact, I think it’s possible that they could give legal status like they did to the DREAM Act qualificators, I mean people who qualified under the DREAM Act — they could do the same thing to millions of people more. What would stop them from doing that? [...] There are consequences to electing bad people to office. There are consequences to the fact that Barack Obama won his re-election. There are, there is no denying it. And we are living that every single day and there is no denying it.

Listen:

Throughout the interview, Rubio stressed that the 13-year legalization process will be long and strenuous, pointing out that undocumented immigrants can’t earn provisional status until the Department of Homeland Security commences a comprehensive border security plan. Immigrants will not be allowed to transition into permanent resident status before DHS implements a mandatory employment verification system and deploys an electronic exit system.

If it fails to achieve its security goals in 5 years — persistent surveillance in high risk sectors of the border and ensure that 90 percent of entries at certain high-risk southwestern border areas are apprehended or deterred — a bipartisan Border Commission of border-state governors will “take over.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned on Sunday that the immigration reform debate could be choked off if his Senate colleagues submit bill-killing amendments.

As a member of the Senate’s so-called “Gang of Eight” devoted to immigration reform, Rubio has taken the spotlight as the GOP’s point person on the issue. With the bipartisan group said to be readying a bill to be introduced next week, Rubio set off Sunday morning to appear on a record-breaking seven Sunday news shows, discussing immigration reform on each of them.

Speaking to NBC’s David Gregory, Rubio informed the Meet the Press host that he didn’t believe it likely that anything would happen to cause him to step back from the bipartisan compromise the Gang of Eight has crafted. The Florida senator also assured Gregory that the group’s bill was just a starting point, and that the process would be open to amendments, contrary to the claims of reform opponents.

Rubio warned, however, that amendments would likely come seeking to derail the entire process, and promised to oppose such measures even if they come from his Republican colleagues:

RUBIO: But obviously there are 92 other Senators, who have ideas of their own, and I think from them were are going to get ideas to improve this. We are going to get ideas that make it better, and I welcome that. Now, there are amendments designed to undermine this. There are amendments that will be designed to make this thing un-doable, and obviously I will oppose those, especially if that’s the intent of them. I look forward to an open process on this.

Rubio made a similar point appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, warning “there will also be amendments designed as poison pills to doom the bill.” The same process can already be seen in the debate over gun violence prevention, as Republicans are already lining up amendments to potentially water-down or kill the chances of reform entirely. Opponents to immigration reform will have an uphill climb against public opinion, however, as 64 percent of those polled recently support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.