How Marco Rubio can help Mitt Romney without spot on GOP ticket

Mitt Romney has a Latino problem, and a new Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday confirms it. The survey shows President Obama beating Mr. Romney among Latino voters by a whopping 40 points – 67 percent to 27 percent. That’s worse than the 36-point margin by which 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain lost the Latino vote.

Two days ago, Romney was overheard telling donors that recent polling of Hispanic voters “spells doom for us.” And he said the GOP needs to woo Hispanics with proposals like a “Republican DREAM Act.”

Enter Marco Rubio. The charismatic Cuban-American junior senator from Florida is often touted as a potential running mate for Romney, but even if he’s not on the ticket – and there are reasons to believe he won’t be (starting with youth and inexperience) – Senator Rubio can still help Romney, Republican strategists say.

So far, there is no Republican version of the DREAM Act, but Rubio has been working on one. The existing version, backed mostly by Democrats and unable to reach the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate, provides a pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who complete two years of a four-year college or serve two years in the US military.

Rubio says he wants to help these young immigrants – caught in legal limbo through no fault of their own – but cites problems in the existing bill, including the pathway to citizenship. He says that would encourage more illegal immigration.

“So here’s what I think we should do,” Rubio told Juan Williams on Fox News recently. “We figure out a way to accommodate them and there are ways to do that.” One way, he suggests, is a “visa process that legalizes them” and, while not carving out a path to citizenship, “wouldn’t prohibit them in the future from accessing the citizenship process.”

The DREAM Act is wildly popular among Latino voters, and polls show Republican resistance to it has damaged the party’s image among Latinos. But a tough stance on illegal immigration is a core belief among the Republican base, and Romney has hewed to that position in both of his presidential campaigns.

In addition to Rubio, two other Republican senators – Jon Kyl of Arizona and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas – are working on new DREAM Act legislation, but nothing has been released.

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