New York Times
By Julia Preston
December 16, 2015
The
two Hispanic senators in the Republican presidential race — Ted Cruz of
Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida — battled over immigration in the
debate on Tuesday, competing
to show who is tougher on border security. Mr. Rubio is vulnerable with
conservatives on the divisive issue because of a bill he sponsored in
2013 that would have given people in the country illegally a pathway to
citizenship.
After
Tuesday’s debate, readers asked us to look into whether the two
candidates had accurately portrayed their own records on immigration:
“Cruz and Rubio exchanged conflicting
claims on whether Cruz has or will ever support citizenship/amnesty for
immigrants who are currently in the country illegally,” Laurence
Schiffman wrote in. “Please clarify with a bit of historical
perspective.”
Mr.
Rubio was trying to dim Mr. Cruz’s luster with conservative voters, who
have been gravitating toward Mr. Cruz in Iowa, by claiming that Mr.
Cruz had also supported
legalization for those immigrants. Directly challenged by Mr. Rubio,
Mr. Cruz said twice, “I have never supported legalization.”
That’s
not quite right. During the debate in the Senate over the bill in 2013,
Mr. Cruz introduced an amendment that would have given legal status,
but no possibility
of citizenship, to those here illegally. At the time Mr. Cruz said such
immigrants would be “out of the shadows” and eligible eventually to
become permanent residents, although not citizens.
Recently
Mr. Cruz, responding to Mr. Rubio, has said the amendment, which was
not approved, was a “poison pill” designed to kill the entire bill.
In
the debate Mr. Rubio also said, in accusing tones, that Mr. Cruz had
supported a 500 percent increase in H-1B visas, which allow American
employers to temporarily hire
foreign high-skilled professionals, and a doubling of the number of
green cards. True. Mr. Cruz did support both measures in 2013, although
recently he has called for a halt to any increases in legal immigration
and last week he introduced a bill to tighten
restrictions on H-1B visas.
But
Mr. Cruz’s charge that Mr. Rubio was trying “to muddy the waters” also
seems right. Mr. Rubio has also supported big increases in green cards,
and in January he sponsored
a bill to as much as triple the number of H-1B visas. Mr. Rubio,
confusingly, was attacking Mr. Cruz for agreeing with him.
Meanwhile,
Mr. Cruz, as he pledged to ramp up deportations, presented figures on
the enforcement records of past presidents that were misleading at best.
He said President
Obama was “releasing criminal aliens,” while President George W. Bush
had deported more than 10 million immigrants and President Bill Clinton
12 million.
Mr.
Cruz seems to have lumped together deportations — about 827,000 under
Mr. Clinton and about 2 million under Mr. Bush, compared with at least
2.3 million so far under
Mr. Obama — with a figure for migrants who were returned, mainly to
Mexico, without being formally deported. The number of those “returns”
has plunged under Mr. Obama because, with enhanced border enforcement,
illegal immigration from Mexico has dropped to
40-year lows.
The
bottom line: In this rivalry, Mr. Cruz has consistently taken a harder
line against what he calls “amnesty” for people in the country
illegally. Mr. Rubio has evolved.
He renounced the 2013 bill, saying he concluded that immigration could
not be fixed in one package. On Tuesday he said he still supported a
pathway to citizenship, but one that would come after new border
security and be at least 10 years long — and likely
much longer.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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