Student protesters disrupted a speech Friday by US Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and rising Republican star, accusing him of "anti-immigrant" positions. Rubio was addressing a Hispanic leadership conference at a golf resort near Miami about the American dream when students in the audience rose up and shouted, "Then why don't you support the immigrants?"
The protesters, including some undocumented immigrants, also brandished signs that said: "Marco Rubio - Latino or Tea Partino?" and "Your party or your people?" Some in the audience booed the protesters, and others applauded, while Rubio encouraged the audience to let them have their say. "I've challenged the Republican nominees and all Republicans to not just be the anti-immigration party but to be the pro-legal immigration party, a party that has a positive platform and agenda on how we can create legal immigration," Rubio said.
But Rubio, 40, opposes a proposed law called the Dream Act, which would grant permanent residency to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children, graduated from high school and lived in the United States continuously for five years. About 65,000 students without proper papers graduate from high school in the United States each year, according to White House estimates. The Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, estimates that as many as 726,000 people would benefit from the law.
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