War: Cruz, Rubio Clash On Immigration

On Thursday, Ingraham asked Cruz about Rubio’s claim that since his experience with the Gang of 8, he now believes border enforcement must come first and separately from any action on resident illegal immigrants. “My reaction is all of politics is talk is cheap,” Cruz said.

“We had an epic battle in Congress, just a couple of years ago…on the question of amnesty,” Cruz continued. “And all the folks on the other side dismissed us, said we were wrongheaded and anti-immigrant for believing we should actually secure the border. I have a deep and genuine disagreement with that view. Look, I’ve got to say as a voter, when politicians say the exact opposite of what they’ve done in office, I treat that with a pretty healthy degree of skepticism.”

Ingraham asked Cruz about a series of amendments he proposed to the Gang of 8 legislation and asked if Rubio opposed those amendments. “He opposed every single one of them,” Cruz said, without mentioning Rubio’s name. 

What were those amendments? “I introduced an amendment in the Judiciary Committee to triple the border patrol, to increase four-fold the fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, to put in place a strong E-Verify system, to put in place a strong entry-exit system for visa overstays,” he said.

Cruz never says Rubio voted against his amendments, probably because Rubio, not a member of the Judiciary committee, never had the chance to. Still, Cruz noted the Gang of 8, of which Rubio was a member, opposed his amendments.

“Every Senate Democrat on the committee voted against it, and the sponsors of the Gang of 8, the Gang of 8, all eight of them, agreed to vote against every amendment that would strengthen the bill from an enforcement perspective, and they voted against one after the other,” Cruz said. “So the Republican sponsors and the Democrats voted against that amendment.” 

Rubio responded to Cruz’s broadside to reporters. “Ted is a supporter of legalizing people that are in this country illegally,” he said. “In fact, when the Senate bill was proposed, he proposed legalizing people that were here illegally. He proposed giving them work permits. He’s also supported a massive expansion of the green cards. He supported a massive expansion of the H-1B program, a 500 percent increase. So, if you look at it, I don’t think our positions are dramatically different.” 

When Rubio says Cruz is “a supporter of legalizing people that are in this country illegally,” he is referring to a Cruz-proposed amendment, which the Texan did not mention on Ingraham’s show. Cruz’s amendment would have preserved the original bill’s paths to legal status—the 13-year “generic” Registered Provisional Immigrant path, a 5-year expedited path for DREAMers, and an 8-year expedited path for agricultural workers—but not have allowed those immigrants to eventually receive citizenship.

During the hearing in which he offered his amendments, Cruz touted them by saying that his would not interfere with the bill’s provisions to provide legal status. “If this amendment is adopted to the current bill, the effect would be that those 11 million, under this current bill, would still be eligible for RPI status. They would still be eligible for legal status, and indeed, under the terms of the bill, they would be eligible for LPR [green card] status as well, so they are out of the shadows, which the proponents of this bill repeatedly point to as their principle objective: to provide a legal status for those who are here illegally to be out of the shadows. This amendment would allow that to happen.”

Cruz went on to say that failing to pass his amendment threatened to kill the immigration bill’s chance in the House of Representatives. “I don’t want immigration reform to fail,” Cruz said. “I want immigration reform to pass. And so I would urge people of good faith on both sides of the aisle, if the objective is to pass common sense immigration reform that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration, and that allows those who are here illegally to come in out of the shadows. Then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromise to come together. And this amendment, I believe, if this amendment were to pass, the chances of this bill passing into law would increase dramatically.”

Watch the video below, with the relevant moment beginning at about 3:23:

And here’s what Cruz told the Texas Tribune at the time:

The Cruz campaign has not replied to requests for comment, but spokesman Brian Phillips wrote on Twitter that the Cruz amendment had “nothing to do with legalization” and was meant to illustrate the lack of seriousness about “real reform” among Democrats:

It’s not clear what Phillips means by this. As the video above shows, Cruz said in 2013 that passing his amendment would increase the chances the overall bill would pass. That bill included the aforementioned paths to legalization. The distinction between legal status and citizenship may matter to some voters, but to those most passionate about stopping the Gang of 8 bill, it was one without a difference.

In South Carolina, Rubio also mentioned other amendments Cruz proposed to expand legal immigration through green card reforms and reforms of the H-1B guest-worker visa program. Those proposals stand in contrast to Cruz’s more economic populist rhetoric on immigration in this week’s Republican debate.