What Mr. Cruz has tried to articulate in both word and deed is a middle ground. It got no support from Democrats in Washington, but it goes further than many on the far right want to go by offering leniency to undocumented immigrants here already: A path to legal status, but not to citizenship. A green card with no right to naturalization.
Immigration-reform legislation from the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight passed that chamber in June and includes a 13-year path to citizenship. Mr. Cruz pushed unsuccessfully for amendments that would have, among other things, eliminated the citizenship component.
Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.
"The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight," he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Mr. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation.
Mr. Cruz said recent polling indicated that people outside Washington support some reform, including legal status without citizenship. He said he was against naturalization because it rewarded lawbreakers and was unfair to legal immigrants. It also perpetuates illegal crossings, he added.
Besides barring citizenship while instituting some level of legalization for those here already, Mr. Cruz has proposed increasing the number of green cards awarded annually, to 1.35 million from 675,000. He also wants to eliminate the per-country limit that he said left applicants from countries like Mexico, China and India hamstrung when they tried to gain legal entry to this country.
It depends on what the meaning of amnesty is for Cruz. Legalization is amnesty.
Dec 2015--Reporter asks Ted Cruz four times: "How do you define amnesty?"
A sovereign act of pardon and oblivion for past acts, granted by a government to all persons (or to certain persons) who have been guilty of crime or delict, generally political offenses
I think an amnesty is only a pardon of past crimes. And there are criminal and civil penalties for illegal entry into the US and illegal presence.
How do these politicians leap from a pardon for past crimes to legalizing the status of illegal entrants and allowing them to stay? It would seem the proper actions after the amnesty would be to say, we aren't going to prosecute you, but now we must begin removal procedures.
And there are penalties for illegal entry and illegal presence in the US.