Cruz's Own Words

The mood in Republican ranks on the topic of immigration has shifted dramatically since 2013. At the time, many Republicans favored “fixing” the “broken” immigration system by improving border security and increasing the number of legal immigrants permitted annually, and permitting those already here to obtain legal status (though not citizenship). Sen. Ted Cruz was in that category. He now denies this emphatically. Yesterday, he issued the following statement:  

Let’s have a moment of simple clarity: I oppose amnesty. I oppose citizenship. I oppose legalization for illegal aliens. I always have and I always will, and I challenge every other Republican candidate to say the same thing or if not, to stop making silly assertions that their records and my records on immigration are the same. It is demonstrably false.

Senator Cruz explains that his support for an amendment to the immigration reform bill of 2013 was a “poison pill” — a measure designed to reveal the hypocrisy of the bill’s supporters. The following is a partial transcript of an interview Cruz did with his former Princeton professor Robert P. George on May 31, 2013. Judge for yourself whether he was sincere. My question is, if he was not sincere, how are we to know when he is?    

Partial transcript:

Excerpt from Ted Cruz interview with Prof. Robert P. George. The whole thing is here:

Princeton University, 31 May 2013:
 
RG: Ted, we’ve gotta talk about immigration.
 
TC: Okay.
 
RG:  Um, lots of people can’t tell the difference between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, but . . . and confuse the two of you because of the Hispanic background and you’re both senators and young guys . . .
 
TC:  Ah, Cubans all look alike.
 
RG:  Cubans all look alike . . . [laughter] uh, but on this one you and Senator Rubio don’t see eye to eye at all.  Tell us what the fundamental difference is, and why, why do you have this difference?
 
TC:  Well, immigration, I think, is a tremendously important issue, uh, and it is right now in Washington a very challenging issue.  I, on immigration I am both optimistic and pessimistic, uh, which may be a sign I’ve been in Washington too long already.  I’m optimistic because I think there is widespread bipartisan agreement on a lot of areas of immigration.  I think there is overwhelming bipartisan agreement across the country that we’ve got to get serious about securing the borders, that in a post-9/11 world it doesn’t make sense that we don’t know who’s coming into this country, we don’t know their history, we don’t know their background, and we need to provide the manpower and resources to finally secure the borders.
 
            I think there is also widespread bipartisan agreement across the country that we need to improve and streamline and expand legal immigration, that we need to remain a nation that doesn’t just welcome, that celebrates legal immigrants.
 
RG:  Now, now there’s a dispute on that one in the conservative movement, and you’re on the pro-immigration side.
 
TC:  I, I am unapologetically, emphatically, loudly pro-legal immigration.
 
RG:  Okay.  Go ahead.
 
TC:  Um, and everyone agrees our immigration system’s broken.  The way you fix it, I think, is focusing on areas of bipartisan agreement.  If you focused on a bill that did the two things I just said, it would sail through Congress.  Unfortunately, the bill that is currently moving through Congress, I don’t believe is animated by those desires, and . . .
 
RG:  This is the Rubio-Schumer bill.
 
TC:  It is the Gang of Eight bill, with the support of the White House, and the biggest reason I’m pessimistic is, based on the behavior of the proponents of the Gang of Eight bill and of the White House, I don’t believe that the White House, that their goal is to pass an immigration bill.  I think their goal is to have a political issue. 
 
The current bill—so we just went through the last two weeks of mark-up in the Judiciary Committee, considered over a hundred amendments.  Every Democrat voted straight party line to reject every single substantive amendment that would have improved the bill, that would have secured the border, that would have expanded legal immigration, that would have reached a compromise that could actually pass, and party line they voted one after the other after the other down.  I believe what the White House wants is to pass this bill through the Senate, and they almost surely have the votes to pass it through the Senate, uh, and then for this bill to crash and burn in the House.  And I think the most divisive issue in this bill is a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally.
 
RG:  And that’s where Senator Rubio is on one side and you’re on the other.
 
TC: We have a disagreement there.
 
RG:  Tell us, what’s the basis of it?
 
TC:  The disagreement is on several, several aspects.  Number one, I think a path to citizenship for those who are here illegally is unfair to the millions of people who have followed the rules, who have waited in line years, sometimes decades in their home countries before coming to this country.  I think we are a nation of rule of law, I think that means something, it’s why people come to this country.  And so I don’t think it is appropriate to allow a path to citizenship for those are here illegally.  
 
I also think doing so encourages additional illegal immigration.  We right now have 11 million people here illegally; if we pass a path to citizenship, what it tells people across the world is, hey, come here illegally, disregard the laws, and in another ten, twenty years we’ll have, instead of 11 million, we’ll have 10 or 20 or 30 million, and we’ll do it again.  And the current system is the opposite of humane.  You know, I’m from Texas.  Texas has the longest portion of the border with Mexico.  I’ve spent a lot of time down on the border with ranchers who, every day, see people crossing illegally.  They see children, they see pregnant women dying in the desert because they’re entrusting themselves to coyotes, to drug dealers, I mean it is a horrible system that leads to sexual exploitation, that leads to human suffering. 
 
And it’s worth pointing out, the amendment that I introduced.  So I introduced a total of five amendments to the bill.  One would put real teeth in the border security, because the current bill does, is, is utterly toothless in border security.  Every Democrat voted party line to reject that.  I introduced two bills to dramatically increase legal immigration, one of which was to take high-skilled immigrants, temporary high-skilled visas, current cap is 65,000, to increase that fivefold, to 325,000.  Why?  Because those immigrants are pro-growth; the data shows that for every one of them, it generates 1.7 jobs.  Every Democrat voted party line against that. 
 
And by the way, what we’re doing right now makes no sense at all.  Every year we educate tens of thousands of computer scientists and engineers and mathematicians from other countries, and we send them back to their home countries.  They start businesses there, they create jobs there, and they compete with us.  I mean, it is utterly asinine, and yet the response the Democrats gave was, we cut a deal with the union bosses, and we can’t raise it any more.  I think that was profoundly cynical.  
 
I had a third amendment to increase the overall cap on legal immigration from 675,000, where it is today, to 1.35 million.  Part of the reason we see illegal immigration is ’cause the legal system’s broken and there are not paths that enable people to come here following the rules.  If we improve and fix the legal system, that goes a long way to stopping illegal immigration.  Every Democrat on the committee voted party line to reject that. 
 
And then the final two amendments were, number one, the one we just talked about, a bill that provided those here illegally would not be eligible for citizenship.  Now, it’s worth thinking for a moment about how that would operate.  That’s an amendment to the underlying bill.  The underlying bill from the Gang of Eight provides for legal status for those who are here illegally, it provides for them getting a temporary visa initially, and ultimately being able to get a green card, as a legal permanent resident.  The amendment I introduced would not change any of that, which would mean the 11 million who are here illegally would all come out of the shadows, and be legalized under the Gang of Eight’s bill.  It would simply provide that there are consequences for having come illegally, for not having followed the legal rules, for not having waited in line, and those consequences are that those individuals are not eligible for citizenship. 
 
Now the answer that was given, Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat from New York, and one of the, the lead defender of the Gang of Eight bill in the Judiciary Committee, he was very candid.  He said, if there is no citizenship, there can be no reform.  And I actually said at the hearing, I said, look, the senior senator from Democrat, uh, the senior senator from New York, I applaud his candor.  He’s made perfectly clear there is a partisan political objective here that trumps everything else, and that if he cannot get a hundred percent of what he wants, that he’s willing to torpedo the entire bill.  That if citizenship is off the table, he’s willing to do nothing to secure the border, to do nothing to improve legal immigration, to do nothing to allow the 11 million to come out of the shadows, ’cause his solution is, leave them where they are, if we can’t get citizenship, we will do nothing. 
 
And what I believe is happening is that that citizenship provision is designed, and the White House knows it’s designed, to be a poison pill in the House, to torpedo the bill, because then they want to campaign in 2014 and 2016 and say, see those Republicans, they killed immigration reform.  And I’ll point out this is not hypothetical; you go back to 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama played a key role with other Democrats in killing immigration reform then.  I mean, there is a history of doing exactly this.  
 
And so, a case I’ve tried to make, and I’ve tried to make to the advocacy groups that care, and care passionately about this issue, the only thing that will change the dynamic is if the stakeholders make clear to the White House, and to the congressional Democrats who are right now refusing to compromise, refusing to find common ground, that failure is not an option.  I want to see commonsense immigration reform pass.  But the only way to do so is to find a middle ground, and right now they’re unwilling to do so, and I think many of the Hispanic advocacy groups in particular are being played.  They’re being played by partisans who want the deal to fail, because they want to use it as a campaign issue rather than to pass it.  And I hope that strategy doesn’t work.
 
RG:  Ted, it sounds from your description of your own proposed solution, very much in line with what the political scientist Peter Skerry at Boston College has been advancing, if I’ve understood you correctly, you would actually grant current illegal immigrants, or at least some substantial portion of those who are here unlawfully, permanent status, green card status.  So this is not a deportation bill, proposal, or a self-deportation as Romney called it, or anything like that.  So the disagreement is about whether they should be granted citizenship through some mechanism, through some process, not whether they should be moved from illegal status to legal status.
 
TC:  The amendment I introduced affected only citizenship.  It did not affect the underlying legalization in the Gang of Eight bill.
 
RG:  Would your bill pass the House, or would it be killed because it would be proposing amnesty?
 
TC:  Um, I . . .
 
RG:  Not citizenship but amnesty?
 
TC:  I believe, if the amendments I introduced were adopted, that the bill would pass.  And, and my effort in introducing them was to find a solution that reflected common ground and that fixed the problem.  Look, what most Americans, when you ask most Americans, what’s your view on immigration, the most common answer you get is, fix the problem, it’s broken, we don’t want to see, in 1986 we had an amnesty bill, and the amnesty bill was a promise that Congress made to the American people, we’re going to grant amnesty to those who are here illegally, and in return we’re going to secure the border and fix the problem so it’s not going to happen again.  And I believe roughly 3 million people who were here illegally were eligible for amnesty.  We’ve now gone from 3 million to 11.  
 
And the promise, what happened was, the amnesty happened, and the border security didn’t.  And I think a lot of Americans are understandably skeptical, this current proposal, for example, the border security provision gives unreviewable, subjective, standardless discretion to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, to, quote, “propose a plan, and then to assess whether the border’s secure.”  Now, if you have an amorphous standard that’s completely subjective, I can state with a metaphysical certainty, that test will be met, particularly by this administration.  The Secretary of Homeland Security testified to the Judiciary Committee, she believes the border is secure today. 
 
I think a lot of people are really cynical, if they’re not going to fix the problem, we need a solution that actually fixes our broken immigration system, and as I said, I am a passionate believer in legal immigration, and I think one of the real casualties of this fight is the willingness to increase and improve and streamline legal immigration, reduce the bureaucracy, to make the system one where we can have people come from, from around the world, and follow the tradition of this country of being a beacon of hope and opportunity.  
 
RG:  It does sound as though your own proposal, though, is very much in line with the Reagan ’86 proposal.  You would just put teeth in the border enforcement, uh, aspect of the proposal.  The . . .
 
TC:  And it would not allow citizenship, which, which I think . . .
 
RG:  Reagan did?
 
TC:  Reagan did.
 
RG:  Okay.
 
TC:  Reagan, it was, ’86 was full amnesty.
 
RG:  So green card yes, but citizenship no.
 
TC:  That would be the effect of the amendment.