From shadows to
spotlight, Mario Diaz-Balart plays powerful role in immigration talks
By Marc Caputo mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
Politics April 20, 2013
Mario Diaz-Balart spoke
bluntly to his fellow U.S. House Republicans during a closed-door meeting at
Washington’s Capitol Hill Club.
“Immigration is the 800-pound gorilla,” the
Miami congressman told the room of vote-counting whips just seven days after last
November’s election.
“The 800-pound gorilla just punched us in the face.”
Indeed, Hispanic voters had turned from Republicans in
record numbers, in heavy measure because of the way the party’s candidates
handled immigration.
But beyond the political numbers, Diaz-Balart said, the
immigration policy data mattered even more.
About 11 million immigrants illegally live in the country.
The system is broken. The time to fix it, he said, is during a non-election
year.
“After I was done speaking, unlike in previous years, a huge
number of my colleagues on the whip team came up to me to tell me it was time
to do it,” Diaz-Balart told The Herald.
“What really changed,” he said, “was a willingness by many
to confront the small handful of members who have been very vocal against doing
anything, against doing anything realistic.”
That day, Nov. 13, marks not just a turning point in the
immigration debate, but a significant moment in Diaz-Balart’s political career.
Today, the longtime lawmaker plays one of the most-crucial
Washington roles in immigration that many have never heard about.
The scion of Miami’s preeminent Cuban exile family,
Diaz-Balart is a former state legislator, five-term congressman and former nephew
by marriage of Fidel
Castro and cousin to the
dictator’s first son and namesake.
Diaz-Balart’s oldest brother, Lincoln, left Congress in
2010, having passed a significant Central American immigration-citizenship law
and a codification of the Cuban embargo.
As Lincoln (they’re known by many in Miami by just their
first names) served in his last term, Mario emerged as an even more important
immigration-reform player.
The contrast with his fellow Miami Republican and friend,
Sen. Marco Rubio, is sharp.
Rubio, a fixation of the national press, has saturated the
news media as a leading member of the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight,”
which has met for the past four months.
By comparison, Mario Diaz-Balart has operated far more in
the shadows, where his friendly back-slapping consensus building style has
smooth over partisan rifts.
Ever since 2009, Diaz-Balart and a bipartisan group of House
members have clandestinely met on and off to hammer out an immigration-reform
bill. The bill was about 90 percent finished when it was shelved in 2011, as
the new Republican House leadership showed as little interest in tackling
reform as the old Democratic House leadership.
The bill is being updated and, as the Senate votes on its
similar version, will be publicly introduced soon either as one mammoth piece
of legislation or in parts.
Regardless of its final form, the House bill sounds like a
blueprint for what became the more publicized Senate deal.
Because immigration reform has to go through a House run by
Republicans — a party less inclined over the years to support comprehensive
immigration reform — Diaz-Balart’s part in getting a final law out of Congress
rivals, if not surpasses, that of Rubio, who serves in a Democrat-controlled
chamber.
Diaz-Balart and his fellow members of the group won’t talk
about their bill, their deals, discussions or progress. The House group has no
flashy nicknames. Unlike the sieve-like Senate, the House members and staffers
didn’t leak info for years. They weren’t regular features on the Sunday
talk-show circuit.
The House group meetings were held in different rooms in
Washington. Some staffers made sure they weren’t seen congregating outside
meeting so as not to arouse attention. A few wouldn’t acknowledge each other in
a friendly fashion in public..
Was there a secret handshake?
“I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you," Diaz-Balart
quipped.
The club was, members say, the best-kept secret in
Washington, where secrets have a shelf life about three minutes. The club was
anti-Washington in this regard as well: It was all about consensus, finding
common ground and not scoring points.
No votes are taken. Harsh words, threats and posturing are
looked down upon.
“No one feels like a loser,” said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez,
an Illinois Democrat.
“One day, Mario said ‘Luis, we really have to never end a
sentence with the phrase: ‘this will kill the deal.’ It was a great idea. And
ever since, we don’t do it. And it’s not only me. It’s everyone in the group.”
Among Diaz-Balart’s better qualities, Gutiérrez said, is his
ability to “take off his partisan hat” — a feat for a member of the Republican
whip team.
Before the two were to appear last week on the Univision’s Al
Punto — a Meet the Press-like show for Spanish-speaking political junkies —
Diaz-Balart lobbied Gutiérrez on the House floor to do the interview together.
“We’re really working together. Shouldn’t we exemplify that
by appearing together?” Diaz-Balart said.
So they sat side-by-side, unlike Democratic Sen. Bob
Menendez and Rubio, who appeared separately on the same broadcast.
“Unlike other Republicans — who are great and I love working
with them — who always talk exclusively about enforcement,” Gutiérrez said,
“Mario talks about the 1,400 people who are deported every day. He talks about the
effect on the family. You can see it on Al Punto.”
“If you didn’t know it, that he was a Republican from Florida,
you would think that he was a Democrat,” Gutiérrez said.
Rep. Jeff Denham, a California Republican, also sits on the
secret immigration group and is a member of the House whip team with
Diaz-Balart.
“When he speaks at the whip meetings, it’s because he has
something important to say,” he said. “There are those who get up and speak all
the time about every single topic. Then, there are those like Mario — very few
— who don’t talk all the time and only speak when they have something to say.
Everybody stops and listens.”
Denham recalls the “passion” of Diaz-Balart’s speech at the
team’s first meeting after the election, when he discussed the harm of
splitting up families through deportation.
Diaz-Balart also noted he had been warning Republicans for a
decade about handling immigration reform. Fellow Miami Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
had been doing it for longer as had Lincoln Diaz-Balart.
The three in 2010 accounted for the eight Republican House
votes in favor of the DREAM Act, which provides a citizenship path for certain
students and military-bound younger people. The act failed in the Senate amid
strong Republican opposition.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush, a Coral Gables resident who co-wrote
the just published “Immigration Wars” policy book, said he’s “not surprised”
that Diaz-Balart is in this role.
“Mario is a connector,” Bush said. “When I was governor, and
he was a legislator, and I had something big to do, he was always at the top of
the list. He’s not confrontational. He is smart, but he listens well. He shares
credit. He’s not grandstanding.”
But Diaz-Balart has his critics, particularly on the right.
Some conservatives fret about the “amnesty” of legalizing the status of so many
illegally in the country.
To those Republicans, newly elected tea party Idaho Rep.
Raúl Labrador — also an immigration working-group member — might have more
sway, either to attract their votes or mute their criticisms.
But Diaz-Balart, particularly in English-speaking media,
makes it clear he’s no liberal. He often speaks forcefully about
border-security and ensuring that those seeking legalized status pay fines and
serve a prolonged probation-like period to wait their turn.
“We need to lower the rhetoric,” Diaz-Balart said Friday at
the conservative Hispanic Leadership Network’s conference in Coral Gables.
“Lower the decibels,” he said.
About the same time, though, some congressional Republicans
were already linking the immigration bill with last week’s Boston Marathon
terror attacks, likely committed by two legal immigrants.
Diaz-Balart said it was too early to link the issues, but he
pointed out that the crime occurred amid the current immigration system.
And beyond the policy, there still stand the politics.
The non-Hispanic white vote — the GOP’s base — is
proportionately shrinking as the Hispanic vote is growing overall. Hispanics
are also trending more Democrat because GOP rhetoric has sometimes sounded
offensive and the party has come across as too-often opposed to immigration
reform law.
“Both parties have used immigration as a political tool,”
Diaz-Balart said. “The difference is: It has worked for Democrats as a wedge.
For Republicans, immigration has been suicide.”
Immigration
U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services is a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Note:
Michael Chertoff
was the secretary for the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, is the chairman for BAE Systems Inc., and a co-founder & chairman for the Chertoff Group.
Lee H. Hamilton is
a director at BAE Systems Inc., a co-chair
for the Independent Task Force on
Immigration and America's Future, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the Aspen Institute
(think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Madeleine K.
Albright is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and
was a director at the Center for a New
American Security.
Chertoff Group
was a contributor for the Center for a
New American Security.
Frederic V. Malek
is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), the chairman for the American Action Forum, a member of the Alfalfa Club, and the founder &
board member for the American Action
Network.
Jeb Bush was a board
member for the American Action Forum,
the Florida state government
governor; commerce secretary, is a member of the Alfalfa Club, and an advisory committee member for the Hispanic Leadership Network.
Hispanic
Leadership Network is an offshoot of the American Action Network.
Mario Diaz-Balart
is an advisory committee member for the Hispanic
Leadership Network, a FL
congressional delegation house member, a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rafael Diaz-Balart’s son, Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s brother, Mirta Diaz-Balart’s nephew, was a
member of the Florida House of
Representatives, a Florida Senate
senator, and Fidel Castro's nephew.
Rafael
Diaz-Balart was Mario Diaz-Balart &
Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s son, the majority
leader for the Cuba House of
Representatives, Mirta Díaz-Balart’s
brother, and Fidel Castro's brother-in-law.
Rafael
Díaz-Balart
Rafael
Lincoln Díaz-Balart y
Gutiérrez (January 17, 1926 in Banes,
Cuba - May 6, 2005) was a Cuban
politician. Díaz-Balart served as Majority Leader
of the Cuban House of Representatives and
Under-Secretary of Interior during the presidency of Fulgencio
Batista.
In 1955, he gave a speech before the Cuban House of
Representatives in opposition to the amnesty granted to his former
brother-in-law, Fidel Castro, for his involvement in the 1953
attack on the Moncada Barracks. Díaz-Balart was elected senator
in 1958, but was unable to take office due to Fidel Castro's rise
to power on January 1, 1959.
He founded La Rosa Blanca (The White Rose), the first
anti-Castro organization, in January 1959. He is the father of U.S. Congressmen
Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, TV news journalist
José Díaz-Balart, and investment banker
Rafael Díaz-Balart. He is the brother of Mirta Díaz-Balart, Fidel
Castro's first wife. His brother, Waldo Díaz-Balart is a painter
and a former actor
in two movies by Andy Warhol in the 1960s. His father, Rafael Díaz-Balart was
elected to the Cuban House of Representatives in 1936 and his brother-in-law,
Juan Caballero, was elected to the Cuban House of Representatives in 1954.
Lincoln
Diaz-Balart is Rafael Diaz-Balart’s
son, Mario Diaz-Balart’s brother, Mirta Diaz-Balart’s nephew, was a Florida Senate senator, a member of the
U.S. House of Representatives, and Fidel Castro's nephew.
Mirta
Diaz-Balart is Mario Diaz-Balart
& Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s aunt, Rafael Diaz-Balart’s sister, and was
married to Fidel Castro.
Fidel Castro was
married to Mirta Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart & Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s uncle, the president
of Cuba, and is Raul Castro & Juanita
Castro’s brother.
Raul Castro is Fidel Castro & Juanita Castro’s brother, and the president of the council of state
for Cuba.
Juanita Castro is
Fidel Castro & Raul Castro’s sister, and collaborated
with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Michael V. Hayden
was a director at the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), and is a principal for the Chertoff Group.
Michael Chertoff
is a co-founder & chairman for the Chertoff
Group, the chairman for BAE Systems
Inc., and was the secretary for the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security.
Lee H. Hamilton is
a director at BAE Systems Inc., a co-chair
for the Independent Task Force on
Immigration and America's Future, and an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Chertoff Group
was a contributor for the Center for a
New American Security.
Madeleine K.
Albright was a director at the Center
for a New American Security, and is
a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Frederic V. Malek
is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), the chairman for the American Action Forum, a member of the Alfalfa Club, and the founder &
board member for the American Action
Network.
Jeb Bush was a board
member for the American Action Forum,
the Florida state government
governor; commerce secretary, is a member of the Alfalfa Club, an advisory committee member for the Hispanic Leadership Network, and George H.W. Bush’s son.
Hispanic
Leadership Network is an offshoot of the American Action Network.
Mario Diaz-Balart
is an advisory committee member for the Hispanic
Leadership Network, a FL
congressional delegation house member, a member of the House Committee on Appropriations, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rafael Diaz-Balart’s son, Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s brother, Mirta Diaz-Balart’s nephew, was a
member of the Florida House of
Representatives, a Florida Senate
senator, and Fidel Castro's nephew.
Juanita Castro is
Fidel Castro & Raul Castro’s sister, and collaborated
with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
George H.W. Bush was
a director at the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), is a member of the Alfalfa
Club, Jeb Bush’s father.
George H. W. Bush New World Order Quotes
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