ICYMI: Sen. Cruz Pens Letter to WSJ Championing House Leadership on Immigration
WASHINGTON, DC -- Below is a letter penned by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, championing the House's leadership on immigration:
The House Is Dealing With the Illegal Immigrant Crisis
If you grant amnesty to those who come as children, many more children will come.
The Wall Street Journal
Your editorial "The GOP's Border Spectacle" (Aug. 2) laments divisions among Republicans, and then sets out to divide Republicans. Rather than lambaste conservatives for seeking meaningful solutions to the crisis at the border, perhaps it would be better to focus on what we in fact accomplished.
On Friday, the House of Representatives passed two major reform bills to address the crisis. Several elements of that legislation mirror proposals that I had introduced in the Senate.
However, Senate Democrats refused even to allow a vote on these reforms, and Majority Leader Harry Reid sent the Senate home for August without having passed anything to address the crisis. Republicans are leading, and Democrats are obstructing.
The Journal's main complaint is that it was thought to be bad politics for conservatives to press for a vote to end President Obama's amnesty. This claim is wrong, both on policy and politics.
On policy, the direct cause of the humanitarian crisis at the border was the president's 2012 amnesty: Before the amnesty, in 2011, roughly 6,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended; in 2014—after the amnesty—90,000 children will cross the border.
If you grant amnesty to those who come as children, many more children will come. And those children are being victimized, many physically and sexually assaulted by violent drug-cartel coyotes.
It is not compassionate to do as the Democrats have done—doing nothing to stop the tens of thousands of little girls and boys being abused.
As the son of a refugee from Cuba, I understand their plight in a very personal way. And I'm unwilling to follow the president's course of spending billions on social services but maintaining the amnesty that will in perpetuity cause thousands more children to be victimized.
And, as for politics, I agree with the aphorism that good policy is good politics. Polling shows that 68% of Americans disapprove of President Obama's immigration policy. Why is it bad politics to highlight its failures?
We cannot solve this crisis without prospectively ending the amnesty. According to a survey conducted by President Obama's own U.S. Border Patrol, 95% of adults and children who are apprehended say they came to the U.S. because they believe they will receive a "permiso" that will allow them to remain in the U.S. That has to end.
That's the right policy—and the right politics.
We should work to solve the problem. And that's what the House did.
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