Wall Street Journal (Opinion)
By Allysia Finley
February 24, 2016
Ted
Cruz miscalculated by believing that tagging Marco Rubio with the
scarlet word “amnesty” would nip the Florida senator’s ascent in South
Carolina. However, the lesson
Mr. Cruz seems to have drawn from his disappointing third-place finish
is that he didn’t play the restrictionist card enough.
So
now he’s trying to trump Donald Trump on immigration. This isn’t a
winning strategy, but it may reflect an insular Cruz campaign that is
struggling to convey a broader
vision. In an interview on Monday night with Bill O’Reilly on Fox News,
the Texas senator declared that he would use Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) to round up and deport all 12 million immigrants in
the U.S. illegally, no exceptions. “That’s what
ICE exists for. We have law enforcement who looks for people who are
violating the law and deports them,” he said.
If
“Tommy O’Malley from County Cork in Ireland is over here and he
overstays his visa and he has got a couple of kids and he settled into
Long Island,” Mr. O’Reilly pressed,
would a President Cruz “send the feds to his house, take him out and
put him on a plane back to Ireland?” Mr. Cruz replied: “You better
believe that.”
Then he added:
“Donald
says once he deports them, he would let them back in as citizens. I
will not—and for anyone who is concerned about—do not want to see wages
driven down. And, I
think Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are wrong to drive down wages and
take away Americans’ jobs by giving 12 million people here legally U.S.
citizenship. That is not consistent with rule of law.”
This
is a hard break from Mr. Cruz’s earlier equivocations on deportation.
In January, he said on CNN: “I don’t intend to send jackboots to knock
on your door and every
door in America. That’s not how we enforce the law for any crime,”
noting that “we don’t live in a police state.” When asked during the
Feb. 13 South Carolina GOP debate whether he would use a list to track
down illegals, he pivoted to attacking Mr. Rubio
on amnesty.
Mr.
Cruz is using immigration to tap into anxieties about the economy and
“law and order.” But he is flogging what is know as the “lump of labor
fallacy” by suggesting
that the number of jobs in the economy is fixed, which is what unions
claim. Mr. Cruz must have figured that this message would resonate in
the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday (apparently it didn’t), and he may keep
promoting it in Southern states that have continuing
high unemployment. But it clashes with his pro-growth argument for tax
and regulatory reform.
His
stridency on immigration may also alienate more voters than it
attracts. In South Carolina, Mr. Cruz bludgeoned Mr. Rubio on
immigration, concentrating his fire on
the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform that the Florida
senator co-sponsored in 2013, which included a pathway to citizenship
for illegal immigrants who wait for 13 years and pay $2,000 in fines.
In
an ad released last week, the Cruz campaign spliced together statements
by Mr. Rubio and President Obama about the bill. Despite promising not
to “support blanket amnesty,”
the ad says, when “Rubio got to Washington” he “wrote the bill giving
amnesty to illegals using Obama’s talking points to make his speech.”
During
the Feb. 13 GOP debate, Mr. Cruz said: “When Harry Reid and Chuck
Schumer and establishment Republicans were leading the fight to pass a
massive amnesty plan, I
stood with Jeff Sessions and Steve King and the American people and led
the fight to defeat that amnesty plan.”
Mr.
Cruz’s ostensible goal is to use the Gang of Eight bill to define Mr.
Rubio as part of the “establishment.” The trouble is that most voters
don’t agree with his restrictionist
message. According to a Gallup poll in August, half of Republicans
support a pathway to citizenship while 18% favor allowing illegal
immigrants to stay and work for a limited period. In South Carolina’s
exit polls, 53% of GOP voters backed offering illegal
immigrants legal status.
What’s
more, just 10% of voters in South Carolina, 13% in Iowa and 15% in New
Hampshire listed immigration as the issue that most concerns them. Mr.
Trump beat Mr. Cruz
2-to-1 among these voters in South Carolina. In Nevada this week, 20%
of caucus-goers listed immigration as their top concern; they broke
3-to-1 for Mr. Trump. Maybe they aren’t as worried about the Mexican
housekeeper with an expired visa as an Islamic jihadist
who may be posing as a Syrian refugee. Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruz
hasn’t endorsed a ban on Muslim immigration (not yet, at any rate).
Mr.
Cruz probably hopes that calling for universal deportation of illegal
immigrants will tip some Trump voters into his column. But most Trump
voters support the apprentice
politician for a host of reasons, and running to his right on
immigration doesn’t help broaden Mr. Cruz’s base, which is what he needs
to do to stop Mr. Rubio’s rise.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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