In 2012-2013, the Republican Brain Trust came up with a great idea: the salvation of the GOP would be to team up with the Democrats to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. If you can’t trust Chuck Schumer to save the Republican Party for you, who can you trust?

Everybody agreed that the the perfect face to sell Chuck Schumer’s amnesty bill to Republicans would be Marco Rubio, because there is nothing white Republican voters like more than getting lectured by people deemed to be nonwhite (e.g., Eric Holder) about how whites must be punished for their sins.

Interestingly, it has recently emerged that Senator Rubio was more nervous than the GOP Establishment about his signing on to the Democrats’ amnesty push. But all the Miami Republicans drinking at the Biltmore Hotel pool told him it was a no-brainer: everybody they knew was in favor of it.

But, it turns out, Rubio was right to be nervous.

Not surprisingly, Rubio hasn’t been helped in 2016 by his decision to align with Schumer in 2013.

So far, despite Floridian Jeb Bush’s implosion, Rubio has lost all four Republican primaries/caucuses, three of them to Donald Trump, who came out of nowhere based on his opposition to illegal immigration. For example, Rubio lost this week in Nevada, a state where he had once lived, 46-24 to Trump.

The Establishment’s logic was obviously nuts. Republicans shouldn’t deploy their talented minority politicians to demand more privileges for their own minority; instead, Republicans they should deploy their top minority politicians to resist give-aways to their own ethnic group. How hard is it to see that?

Rubio, who didn’t have the guts to defy the conventional wisdom in 2013, isn’t stupid, so he has backed off his support of the Gang of Eight bill, unlike Jeb Bush. Also unlike Jeb, Rubio is still in the race.

But, Rubio is having a hard time getting Republican voters to trust him on immigration.

Perhaps he doesn’t have to: maybe he’ll outlast Cruz, and Trump will spectacularly self-destruct, leaving Rubio to limp home as the default nominee. That could happen.

On the other hand, fortune has favored the bold so far in this campaign.

So here’s a two-stage plan for how Rubio could actually win over Republican voters on the crucial immigration issue.

First, Rubio should make a major speech calling for the immediate end of all the immigration privileges enjoyed by his own Cuban people. He should thank the American citizenry for their tremendous generosity toward Cubans over the decades, but state that the time has come to end the “dry foot” privilege of Cubans before another Mariel-like flash mob of Cubans descends upon America.

Rubio should point out that a major danger for the U.S. going forward in the 21st Century are Camp of the Saints-style migrant mobs like the one that descended upon Germany in 2015.

Unfortunately, the single biggest danger at present for America is a Cuban flash mob, so we need to change the policy privileging Cuban migrants immediately.

As a proud Cuban, I wish that were not so, but as a loyal American I must speak out for the good of my entire country.

This speech I am giving may destroy my political career in Miami. I am a proud Cuban-American son of South Florida, so I don’t take that risk lightly. But I value America’s well-being most.

A few days later, Rubio should return with a second major speech, this one asking his fellow Hispanic-American citizens in general to vote Republican in November not because we Republicans will amnesty illegal aliens, but because we won’t. You should vote Republicans not because of what we promise you as Hispanics, but because of what we promise all Americans as Americans: to do what’s best not for any single ethnic group, but for the citizens of America as a whole.

Most Democrats and many Republicans don’t believe you are patriotic Americans who will support what’s best for the American people as a whole. They tell me the only way to win the vote of Latinos is to bribe them with ethnic privileges like amnesty. But I don’t believe that. I believe you want to do what’s right for the American people as a whole.