As you know the Cubans were actually true refugees having escaped the castro brothers. One more reason why Rubio was so appealing.
But, it seems the minute he got in the Senate and started hanging with the worst of the rinos, linda, mcqueeg and the rest he was history.He's history now.
The republicans have held both chambers of the Florida Legislature and the governorship for a long time. Marco Rubio was Speaker. While he was speaker, conservative members of the legislature wanted to bring up bills concerning illegal immigration. Rubio never allowed that to happen under his watch.
It seems Rubio realized that if a bill was never brought to the floor of the House, he would never have to vote on it. He would never have to definitively show his pro-illegal side.
I’m not sure what you are referring to when you say FL is a bit different. We may not be Texas, California, New Mexico or Arizona with regards to immigration, but that is because most of the hispanics — Cubans, Puerto Ricans and immigrants, like the Haitians, already have legal status. Even though the RINOs in govt. may not have cared about the immigration situation, conservatives wanted to put laws in place protecting Florida in case things got worse, just as AL and GA, our neighbors to the north, have done. Rubio prevented that.
Once he was in the senate, it seems he felt he could do like McCain and Lindsey Graham and the rest of the RINOs in the Senate. That is do whatever you want for four and a half years; then just before election year, become a hard line conservative. He hasn’t really changed a bit. He always has been pro-amnesty. His dislike of the law in Arizona was proof of that. Getting elected into the senate allowed him to be less concerned about showing his liberal tendencies.