Junior Senator for Florida and rising star in the Republican Party, Marco Rubio has been outlining his vision for America in the recent campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination. The hip-hop lover and Miami Dolphins enthusiast has a fascinating story to tell, reaching back to his roots in Cuba where his grandparents lived under the Batista regime. Have a look below to find out more about where Rubio has come from, and how he stands on the issues:

1. “America must stand up to the spread of totalitarianism”.

Advocating for a more substantive foreign policy, Rubio has called for America to reassert itself on the international stage against states such as Iran and Russia, as well as supporting Israel in the Middle East.

2. “All this is going to do is give the Castro regime, which controls every aspect of Cuban life, the opportunity to manipulate these changes to perpetuate itself in power”.

Rubio has been strongly against President Obama’s plans to re-engage diplomatic relations with Cuba, and worries that this will embolden the regime that he believes his family once fled from.

3. “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it”. 

Although he believes that climate change is occurring, Rubio is skeptical that it is human induced. Moreover, he does not feel that human actions are the cause of this, or that laws will “do anything about this”.

4. “We need to authorize the use of force, but more importantly we need to authorize the use of force sufficient to defeat them, to destroy them”.

Speaking with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, Rubio called for an American presence in the Middle East, significant enough to defeat ISIS (ISL or Daesh). He was critical of the Obama Administration’s role so far, and argued that more needed to be done to contain the rising threat of militant Islamism.

5. “On the one hand, calls to grant amnesty to twelve million people are unrealistic and quite frankly irresponsible, on the other hand, not a single opponent of the Senate bill I helped author proposed that we try to round up and deport twelve million human beings.”

Rubio has an understandably nuanced view on the matter of immigration reform, and has worked on various bills at a State and Federal level to resolve this issue. In his book “American Dreams” he discusses a hope that people that have entered the country illegally will be allowed to stay, although he does not outline a path to citizenship for these people. He has also called for better enforcement measures along America’s borders, and believes that this should be a first step in this policy area.

6. “The institution of marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman”.

Rubio maintains that he firmly opposes discrimination against homosexuals, but he is also a defender of traditional marriage and does not support moves by courts to overturn this.

7. “We can afford the military we need, but we must make it a priority”.

While Rubio prioritises reducing the deficit, and has called for major cuts to spending, he is also a believer that America needs to spend more on defence. Writing in an opinion piece for CNN, he argued that America can have the military that it needs, but it must be willing to spend to get it.