MIAMI, Florida (By Andy Barr, Politico) August 13, 2010 — Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio on Thursday declined to take a firm stance on a newly proposed bill in Florida that would require immigrants to carry identification or face a 20-day jail sentence.

The bill was unveiled Wednesday by Bill McCollum, the state’s Republican attorney general and gubernatorial candidate.

In his announcement, McCollum specifically evoked Arizona’s controversial immigration law — which would have allowed law enforcement to check the citizenship of anyone they arrest and detain, before a federal judge moved to stop the implementation of that provision last month.

“Arizona is going to want this law,” McCollum said, according to the St. Petersburg Times. “We're better, we're stronger, we're tougher and we're fairer.”

After the Arizona bill passed, Rubio said he had “concerns” that the measure could “unreasonably single out people who are here legally.”

But when asked by POLITICO about Rubio’s stance on Florida’s proposal, which is in the same vein as Arizona’s, spokesman Alex Burgos offered a softer stance on the new bill.

“He believes the best approach is for the federal government to deal with border security and immigration, and he hopes state efforts like Arizona are a wake-up call for Congress to get its act together,” Burgos said of Rubio. “He thinks it's a step in the right direction for Congress to return to address border security in the upcoming vote.”

Rubio's chief independent opponent, Gov. Charlie Crist, said on Wednesday he opposes the new bill, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer: "I don't like the Arizona law, I don't think it's the right way to go. The people of Florida are very fair-minded and the notion you would pull somebody over because of how they looked or how they appeared and based on maybe nothing else but that, and that is cause for law enforcement to stop you, I don’t think that is a state anybody would enjoy," he said.