Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have broken into an open feud on immigration, putting them on a collision course on a central flashpoint of the GOP presidential nomination.
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday that Sen.
The new plan helps Cruz counter what he says is Rubio’s “blazingly, on-its-face false” argument that both Senators share similar positions on immigration. He proposed giving them work permits. He must consider it safer than defending his previous support for a path to citizenship for the undocumented, which has now been watered down to support for something that might be more feasible politically: green cards with a “very long” path to citizenship. The Senate could vote next week on a Cruz-backed bill that would penalize those jurisdictions.
Later Rubio defended the per-child credit in his tax plan, which has been attacked by a few conservatives as ineffective for growth, by saying his most important role was as a parent. He also said the government must demonstrate it can stop the flow of illegal immigrants before the public will support legal status for those already here. On Thursday, Cruz told conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham that when he offered his amendments in 2013, he was just trying to kill the bill and block amnesty. Angry voters, however, deterred the GOP’s leaders from accepting the deal. Rubio’s critics say he backtracked on the comprehensive approach and has avoided getting pinned down on policy specifics – including during Tuesday’s presidential debate, in which moderators successfully exposed the immigration rift among candidates but somehow failed to bring Rubio into the conversation.
Cruz, meanwhile, said President Obama lacks the “will” to build a complete wall along the southern border and as president he would “build a wall that works”, along with tripling the number of border agents, increasing surveillance, and adding biometric screening at entry checkpoints.
If elected president, Cruz is promising to suspend for 180 days the H-1B visa program, which allows legal immigration for highly skilled foreign workers.
In his plan, Cruz pledges to “shut down President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty on day one” of his presidency. “I will end the lawlessness with the stroke of a pen”, Cruz writes. “We would want to know, we would want access to these people’s phone records, because it would give us clues as to who they were working with, who probably may be involved in plots themselves later on down the road”, Rubio said. “If you support amnesty, you are supporting our national debt growing and growing and growing and growing and bankrupting our kids and grandkids”, he said.
Rubio shot back on Friday. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a leading skeptic of legal immigration, to reform the program, though the details of their plan are still not available.
“He has rewarded millions of illegal immigrants with a promise that our laws will not be enforced against them, and that they will be allowed to stay in the United States without effect – and, in fact, receive benefits funded by American taxpayers”.
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“Current federal law requires legal immigrants and their American sponsors to certify that they will be economically self-sufficient”.
