Who Is More Hardline On Immigration: Ted Cruz Or Donald Trump?

As Donald Trump is presenting himself as the presumptive nominee, he has described himself as “flexible” on immigration. This now has Ted Cruz positioned as the Republican candidate with the most hardline position on immigration.

NumbersUSA, a prominent immigration restriction group, keeps an ongoing scorecard on 2016 presidential candidates and since updated on March 4, Ted Cruz has an “A” and Trump a “B+”.

Roy Beck, founder and executive director of NumbersUSA, spoke to The Daily Caller Tuesday about the differences between the two candidates and how he feels both will return America to policies that benefit the citizen worker.

“The biggest [difference] is the question of amnesty,” said Beck. The group rates candidates on this issue on the basis of whether they support giving work permits to illegal immigrants.

“Cruz specifically says he’s not going to give work permits to the illegal aliens.” He added, “Whereas Trump says ‘I’m going to deport them all, and I’m going to let all kinds of the good ones back in to have.'”

It was not until a July interview with CNN that Trump embraced deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants.

The New York real estate developer first expressed his support for removing the “bad dudes.” Regarding the other illegal immigrants, Trump embraced effectively a effectively a “touch back” plan, in which they would be deported and then there would be an expedited process for them to come back into the United States.

Trump’s immigration plan on his website only mentions deportation of “criminal aliens.” There is no mention of removal of other illegal immigrants.

Ted Cruz similarly has come out in favor of deporting all illegal aliens in TV interviews. However, like Trump, his website only mentions removal of criminal aliens.

NumbersUSA does not focus on mass deportation as Beck said they believe it to be counter-productive. He did comment on the inconsistencies in Cruz’s and Trumps’s plan and how he thinks they both see the issue.

“We believe what [Cruz] means is every illegal alien who comes in contact with law enforcement and is identified as an illegal alien, we will follow the law and put them into proceedings.

He added, “The real question is are you going to have you will have mass-roundups, Trump has for the most part made it pretty clear he’s said, ‘I’m going to have mass round-ups.’ Cruz has not said that.”

Sen. Cruz has in fact said he would deport and round up all 11 million illegal aliens currently in the country but only after prompted by Bill O’Reilly during a February interview. However, in January, Cruz said he ruled out a “deportation force.”

Two other areas where NumbersUSA believes Cruz holds an advantage over Trump are chain-migration and visa lottery. Chain-migration is the process in which foreign nationals are allowed to enter the United States due to have non-nuclear family members who are permanent residents or citizens. The visa lottery awards nearly 50,000 permanent residency visas to foreign nationals annually.

“Almost anybody who believes that legal immigration needs to be reduced to help workers says you have to get rid of chain-migration and visa lottery,” said Beck. “Cruz has gotten better and better as time has gone on… Trump says nothing.”

Beck did tell TheDC there are a couple places where Trump has the advantage on Cruz and that is his support of mandatory e-verify in order to combat visa overstays. He continued to say, “he’s actually said the words ‘we need less legal immigration,’ whereas Cruz has not said that.”

The NumbersUSA founder did criticize Trump’s comments at the most recent debate showing a shift in his views to be being more accepting to guest workers and foreign students, “What he said the other night was like ‘wow!’ He had two things there that he said on high skill and low skill that were very disconcerting and he’s not dug himself out of that hole as far as we’re concerned.”

He added, “The way to defend yourself on H-2Bs is not to say, ‘well there’s a great reason to have tons of low skill workers coming in for seasonal work.’ What he should say is, ‘I’m using it, it’s legal and I’m keeping up with the competition but I think we should have a level playing field and we should require all companies to use American workers.'”

While Trump and Cruz have certain, nuanced differences in their immigration views, Beck told TheDC:

“Overall either one of them on the basis of what they’re promising it would be a radical change from the past. It would be radically different from Obama, radically different from Bush, radically different from Clinton, and significantly different from H.W Bush. And really significantly different from Reagan, both of them are people who will almost take you back to the Eisenhower era of putting Americans first.”

May 8, 2013: Ted Cruz Files Amendment To Deny Path To Citizenship As Senate Works On Bill

....."[Ted Cruz's] amendments are among more than 300 filed by the Tuesday evening deadline. Republicans wanting tighter enforcement provisions filed a majority of the amendments, with Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, leading the pack with 77 amendments.

Supporters of the bill, mainly of the part of it that would legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, kept a steady drumbeat in defense of the measure though emails, websites and social media.

In a press release, America’s Voice, a leading national group that advocates for more lenient immigration laws, singled out Cruz’s anti-citizenship amendment as particularly worrisome.

“This would not only destroy the path to citizenship in the Senate bill-the popular heart of an immigration reform solution-but also turn its back on 100 years of precedent in immigration policy,” said the release..........

Dec 17, 2015: More

...”The bipartisan group of eight senators - including battle-tested veterans and relative newcomers like Rubio - painstakingly negotiated a delicate compromise in early 2013 that would overhaul every corner of the U.S. immigration system, including a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions here illegally.

Fans and foes of the legislation, as well as observers at the time, knew the core bill couldn’t change too dramatically because that would upset that compromise, which not only had the backing of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate but also coalitions off the Hill, such as labor unions and the business lobby.

Cruz’s amendment - which called for stripping out a pathway to citizenship, but keeping a path for legalization - would have done precisely that.

The night before each Senate Judiciary Committee markup, senior Gang of Eight aides would huddle to scour through each of the amendments that were teed up for the following day, determining which proposals would be palatable and which would be unacceptable. This strategy was meant to ensure the core elements of the Gang of Eight deal would stay intact (the four members of the Gang who sat on the Judiciary Committee would vote in a bloc, usually with the rest of the committee Democrats, to vote down potential deal-killers).

“This one was one that clearly we all had to oppose because it went to the core of the deal,” recalled an aide to a Senate Democrat during the 2013 negotiations. “It could’ve unraveled the whole deal.”

Sure, Cruz himself never called it a “poison pill” at the time. But no senator refers to his own proposal as a poison pill, even if it plainly is. The Gang of Eight never considered Cruz as “gettable,” and it was well-known at the time that Cruz was never going to vote for the bill and was in fact, trying to kill it.

“Everyone was rolling their eyes and smirking when he said it would improve the bill,” said the aide. “I don’t think anybody took it seriously.”...

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