There are community leaders and there are party leaders, and usually there is a huge difference between those two particular species of human beings.

And yet in the American news media, discerning one from the other seems to be very difficult. Some analysts apparently can't tell them apart.

It's very simple: Party leaders tend to put the interests of their party over those of their own people, and community leaders have principles that won't allow them to sell out.

Nevertheless, if you are a party politician who happens to be Hispanic, many in the media automatically assume that you must be a Latino community leader and that you speak for Latinos.

It's crazy! Just because of your ethnicity, some people assume that others in your ethnic group would automatically follow you — even when you normally stand against their best interests.

This is why is it still so hard for some media commentators to accept the fact that Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida doesn't speak for Latinos, and that most Latinos don't see him as their leader.

He may still enjoy the support of a majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami, where strong anti-Castro rhetoric is all you need to be popular. But among other Latinos, Rubio is seen as a sellout who constantly puts GOP Party interests above those of his own Hispanic community.

For the past few weeks, ever since the so-called "Gang of Eight" U.S. senators, including Rubio, unveiled their comprehensive immigration reform bill, many in the media had been admiring the fact that these four Democrats and four Republicans had been unwilling to break ranks. They had vowed to stick to their proposals and resist efforts to alter it, from both the left and the right.

Of course, you wouldn't expect one of the Latinos in this Gang of Senators to be the one who caves, right? If anyone were to break ranks with the rest of the group, surely it would be the one who represents the interest of conservative extremists, right?

Well, repulsively but not surprisingly, it was Rubio who broke with the group last week. And it was not to make the measure more lenient, but more draconian.

What kind of Latino leader is this?

Instead of listing the concerns expressed by his own Latino community about the legislation, Rubio spoke for the conservative extremists who continue to pull his strings.

"Clearly what we have in there now is not good enough for too many people, and so we've got to make it better. And that's what I'm asking for and that's what we're working on," Rubio reportedly said on a conservative radio talk show.

When Rubio talks about hearing concerns that more is needed to boost the bill's language, listen to where they are coming from. When he says he is committed to make those changes, ask yourself to whom he is committed.

Now he says the bill he helped to write and vowed to support needs changes to further enforce its border security provisions. And he is predicting that his own bill won't pass the House and maybe not even the Senate unless it becomes more draconian.

Now he says the bill, which wasn't that great for undocumented immigrants to begin with, needs to have more hoops for these people to jump though, and possibly more years for them to wait before they can even apply to become American citizens.

Although the bill would make undocumented immigrants wait at least 10 years before they can apply for permanent residency and at least three more years for citizenship, although it allocates $6.5 billion for border measures aimed at achieving 100 percent surveillance of the entire border and blocking 90 percent of border crossers and would-be crossers in high-entrance areas, Rubio says that's not enough. It's certainly not enough to cure the xenophobia of his conservative backers.

Echoing the sentiments of his hard-right puppeteers, now Rubio says the "triggers" already in the bill to make the legalization of undocumented immigrants contingent on difficult border security goals need to be made "tougher, yet still realistic."

Yes, although the legalization for undocumented immigrants already is contingent on goals that may never be realized, and although these immigrants run the risk of remaining in limbo indefinitely — as "provisional" second-class citizens — Rubio wants more hoops. Instead of 13 years to apply for citizenship, he is now saying some undocumented immigrants may have to wait 20 years.

Here's a Latino politician trying to delay Latino immigrants from voting. Does that make him a Latino leader?

Let's face it: If he wants to give some immigrants the "amnesty" dreaded by conservatives, he has to make them sweat for it. And he has to make sure that his anti-immigrant constituents are satisfied.

If he keeps turning against his own people, Rubio may yet become a great GOP leader. But if he ever gets elected anywhere outside of Miami, it will not be with a majority of the Latino vote. We know the pain his warped ideology would cause our community and we are not masochists.

Yet nowadays, you see the pundits acting surprised whenever Rubio reneges on his own immigration proposals, as if they didn't know that he doesn't speak for Latinos and that tea party conservatives are his puppeteers.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.