Sen. Rubio asserts there will be 60 votes for immigration reform measure

There are not currently 60 votes to pass an immigration reform proposal in the Senate but there will be, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of eight senators that introduced the proposal, said Friday.

Rubio’s comments come a few days after he said that the bill lacked 60 votes, which contradicted statements by other other supporters of the immigration bill.

{mosads}”Well, they are not there today, but I think they will be. That is, the vast majority of my colleagues, for example, many colleagues who just four or five years ago were not in favor of granting legal status to the people who were here illegally, who were not in favor of creating a path to citizenship, today are open to it,” Rubio said in an interview with Univision released Friday.

Supporters of the immigration bill know they need at least 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently told a Nevada radio station that he thought “we have 60 votes” for the measure.

The discussion over whether there will be votes for the bill comes  as the Senate moves forward with the measure. On Thursday Reid filed cloture on the immigration reform bill. A vote on advancing the bill is expected to come on Tuesday.

Rubio also made headlines on Wednesday when he suggested that he would not vote for the bill if modifications were not made to the legislation to increase border security, something conservatives consider a top priority for immigration reform.

Rubio said that changing the bill to tighten border security would attract more supporters in Congress.

“They’re simply asking that we make sure that the border is secure and that another wave of illegal migration doesn’t take place in the future,” Rubio said.

The senator from Florida added that he would not stop pushing immigration reform if the border security measures were not added in the bill.

“No,” Rubio said. “I will continue to work to make sure that it doesn’t come to that. My point is that if we don’t have those—if we cannot secure the border, if we cannot take the necessary steps to earn our colleagues’ trust, this will never become law. We’re wasting our time. But I don’t think it will come to that. I simply think that if we can arrive at a reasonable measure— of course, it has to be something reasonable—to secure the border and prevent any sort of wave of illegal immigration in the future, that we’re going to have more than enough votes to be able to accomplish it.”