Without mentioning Trump directly, Ted Cruz came out hard today against a path to citizenship for Dreamers, saying it’s utterly inexplicable that some Republicans are running to the left of Obama on the issue of amnesty for illegals:
BLOOMBERG – Senator Ted Cruz blasted the idea of giving young undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, a day after President Donald Trump said he was open to the idea as part of immigration legislation being negotiated in Congress.
“I do not believe we should be granting a path to citizenship to anybody here illegally,” the Texas Republican said in the Capitol. “Doing so is inconsistent with the promises we made to the men and women who elected us.”
Cruz didn’t mention the president in his remarks, but they resurfaced some of the bitterness still left over from the presidential campaign. Trump fought Cruz for the Republican nomination and won with a hardline immigration stance that rejected “amnesty” for anyone in the country illegally. During the primaries, Cruz also took a strong stance on immigration and came out firmly against legalizing undocumented immigrants.
Cruz said that President Barack Obama’s 2012 creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which included included temporary work permits and deportation relief for young people that met certain criteria, didn’t provide a path to citizenship.
“For some reason that to me is utterly inexplicable, we see Republicans falling all over themselves to gallop to the left of Obama in a way that is contrary to the promises made to the voters who elected us,” Cruz said. “We need to honor the promises we made. And that is what I am energetically urging my colleagues to do.”
Now that is what a conservative senator should sound like! Thank you Ted Cruz.
And he’s exactly right to point out that not even Obama gave these DACA illegals a path to citizenship and we shouldn’t do it either. It shouldn’t even be on the table and it isn’t what was promised voters in 2016.
Side note: Ted Cruz should give some lessons to Martha McSally on how to speak about this issue like a conservative.