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This morning's Washington Post has a front page story on what it calls Sen. Marco Rubio's "embellishment" of his family's history. Rubio has previously, and on many occasions, said that his parents fled Cuba after Castro's revolution when, in fact, they came to the U.S. in 1956. The article correctly notes that those Cubans who fled Castro had a cache and that those who came before were often viewed with suspicion, so mixing up the dates would have served Rubio's political career.
Still, this is an issue primarily about Rubio's parents. They may have embellished their story and young Marco, who was born in 1971, would have no reason to question it. It is wrong to visit the sins of the parents on the children. Penalizing Rubio for his parents' embellishments would be like denying in-state tuition and a pathway to citizenship to those who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, with no say in the matter themselves. Oops. You guessed it. Rubio does not support the DREAM Act which would open such a pathway to citizenship for children who were brought here without documentation by their parents.
Voters should not penalize Rubio because his parents got their story wrong. But they should penalize him for being hypocritical.
