Ted Cruz wants to legalize most illegal aliens, double legal immigration, increase H1B cap to 325,000

On the video below [1], Senator Ted Cruz of Texas finally confirms just how bad he is on immigration. Rather than strongly opposing the Senate amnesty bill and completely opposing any form of mass legalization, Ted Cruz wanted to "fix" the Senate bill.

On the video, Cruz talks about what his amendments would do. This is what he supports:

  • Ted Cruz wants to legalize most of the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S.
  • Ted Cruz wants to double legal immigration
  • Ted Cruz wants to increase the H1B cap five times to 325,000

Legalizing illegal aliens but not putting them on the "path to citizenship" will not work as expected. As discussed here going back years, the Democratic Party will work night and day to put those former illegal aliens on the "path to citizenship". The same dynamic that leads to the GOP supporting legalization will lead to them supporting those Democratic efforts. See this and this among others for past discussions.

In addition to those bad policies, Cruz uses the following talking points:

See each of those links for more information and examples of people like George W Bush and Barack Obama using those same talking points.

But, wait, there's more. Cruz wants to eliminate caps that supposedly discriminate against Mexican immigration.

On the topic of skilled immigration, he sounds just like Michael Bloomberg except he doesn't use the "staple a green card to their diploma" line as Bloomberg and others do. Cruz says the high tech industry "desperately needs skilled workers", a blatant lie. If there were such a need, it's Econ 101 that wages for high tech workers would spike. That has not occurred.

On the topic of low-skilled immigration, Ted Cruz thinks farmers need even more workers. Now see crops rotting in the fields for why that's wrong.

Cruz is yet another example of what I've been saying for years: the rise of the Tea Parties is very bad news for immigration. Their idols - Cruz, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, formerly Marco Rubio - and their leaders - the Koch family, Grover Norquist, etc. - are very bad on immigration. Rather than turning on those leaders, the Teapartiers enable them.

Want to do something about this? Work to discredit Tea Party leaders that support Cruz. Point out that supporting Cruz puts those leaders on the wrong side of the immigration issue. For instance, work to weaken the support of those like @JennyBethM of the Tea Party "Patriots" for Cruz. Expect to get smeared by Cruz supporters for doing things like that, but respond by pointing out the facts above.

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[1] The shill who asks Ted Cruz the extremely weak immigration question on the video is Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune.