http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-cruz-said-about-legalizing-illegal-immigrants-back-in-2013/article/2578681What Cruz said about legalizing illegal immigrants in 2013
By David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) • 12/18/15 12:01 AM
Sen. Ted Cruz has spent hours since the Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas defending his position on immigration.
As a matter of GOP primary politics, Cruz is in a strong position, having been consistently opposed to permitting the 11-12 million illegal immigrants that live in the U.S. to become eligible for citizenship. But Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, among his chief rivals for the Republican nomination, has managed to keep Cruz off balance on the issue, despite supporting a pathway to citizenship, by pointing out that Cruz had never (until now, apparently) ruled out simple legalization of illegal immigrants.
Since the Republicans faced off Tuesday on CNN, a debate has raged over whether Cruz has been a quiet supporter of legalization, short of citizenship, all along, or whether Rubio has been conveniently mischaracterizing the Texan's position to obsure his own support for a pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.
Based on Cruz's interview with the Washington Examiner on July 1, 2013, just a few days after Senate passage of the comprehensive "gang of eight" immigration bill that Rubio co-authored, it's not unreasonable to walk away thinking that Cruz supported the concept of legalizating illegal immigrants — at least back then — as long as the border is secured first and that legal status was not part of a broader pathway to citizenship.
At the very least, his position is far more nuanced than the simplistic opposition to "amnesty" that he tends to focus on in debates and on the stump. Here's the relevant passage, presented unedited and in full, from that 35 minute interview with Cruz, conducted in Houston at the Free Enterprise Institute think thank that the senator credits with helping to form his political world view:
Examiner: Is the problem with the "Gang of Eight" bill that it has "legalization first," or that it has a "path to citizenship?" In other words, what if it was "legalization first," but they stopped at "green card," and that was it?
Cruz: Both. If you look at the Senate Judiciary Committee, I introduced five amendments. One was a border security amendment that put real teeth in the border security, which the Gang of Eight doesn't have. And, it fixed the problem of legalization first. In 1986, Congress offered the American people, we'll do legalization first and sometime in the future we'll secure the border. What happened in '86? The amnesty happened; the border never got secured. So the amendment I introduced fixed that and said: Secure the border first and then legalization. But I also offered a separate amendment to remove the path to citizenship. Now, notably, that amendment didn't alter the underlying legalization in the Gang of Eight bill. The affect if that amendment had been adopted is that the 11 million people who are here illegally, once the border was secured would have been allowed a work permit and indeed would have been eligible for a green card but not for citizenship because I think there needs to be some consequence for having broken the law.
Here is the rest of Cruz's answer to that question:
And in response to that amendment, because every Senate Democrat voted party line against it, [Democratic New York Senator] Chuck Schumer gave I think the most clarifying comments of the entire immigration debate, where he looked across the room at me and said, if there is no citizenship there can be no reform. And I took the chance to thank Sen. Schumer for his candor because he made very clear that he has one overarching partisan political objective and that is the only thing that matters to him. If he can not received 100 percent of his partisan political objective, he's willing to do nothing — zero — to secure the borders. He's willing to do nothing, zero, to improve legal immigration, to expand high-tech workers, which the tech industry so desperately needs. He's willing to do nothing, zero, to expand agricultural workers that the farming and ranching community so desperately needs. And most tellingly, he's willing to do nothing, zero, for the 11 million people who are here illegally today. What Chuck Schumer is telling them is, I'd rather you stay in the shadows, not have a legal work permit, because the only thing we, the Democratic Party, is interested in is our political objective, and if we don't get that we'll take our marbles on this and go home.Immigration is a complex issue, and among the most politically charged, whether on the campaign trail in Washington. Cruz had only been a U.S. senator for six months when he sat for this interview, and had yet to make his mark by pushing a strategy to shut down the government as a ploy to corner President Obama and the Democrats into agreeing to defund and effectively abandon the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare.
Here are a few more passages, unedited, from this sit-down that might help shed light on Cruz's approach to immigration, at least at the height of the debate over the Gang of Eight bill which eventually died when the Republican House declined to take it up.
Examiner: Are all those [immigration policies] you support not worth giving Chuck Schumer his citizenship? They'd argue that you're taking your marbles and going home.
Cruz: If you look at the context of immigration debates over time, legalization is a major compromise. It is the Democrats who refuse to compromise. We get 100 percent of what we want, or the deal's off. But I do not support a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally for three different reasons.
