ICYMI: Sen. Cruz Questions the Fairness of DAPA/ DACA Programs to Legal Immigrants

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, yesterday questioned U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials on whether the agency is using funds from legal immigrants to subsidize President Obama's illegal executive amnesty, and raised questions about the degree to which the agency is complying with the recently issued federal court injunction.

Sen. Cruz inquired if there is any statutory measure that prevents the USCIS from using fees from legal immigrants to fund President Obama's illegal DAPA and DACA expansion programs.

The USCIS representatives refused to answer, stating, "I'm not qualified to make that kind of determination."

Sen. Cruz responded, "My first concern [with the president's executive amnesty] is that it is contrary to federal law and unconstitutional, and as I noted earlier a federal district court has agreed that it is contrary to law and has accordingly enjoined it. But another major concern is a question of fairness. That executive amnesty benefits and in fact gives preferences to those who are here illegally, and it does so to the detriment of legal immigrants, of those who have followed the law and come here legally."

Sen. Cruz presented two examples:

· If an immigrant entrepreneur wants to come to the United States and start a business, he must pay a fee of $1,500;
· If an immigrant investor wants to use capital to create American jobs, he is charged $6,230 under the immigrant investor pilot program.

And yet, those who broke the law and entered illegally and are applying for DACA or DAPA will not be charged any additional fees.

Sen. Cruz concluded, "I cannot think of any other fee program, any rational fee program, that allows those who break the law to be exempt from paying the fee, but if someone is foolish enough to actually try to comply with our immigration laws, to wait at home, to wait in line for years - sometimes decades - we smack them with a fee of $1,500 or $6,200, but those who are here illegally pay nothing. That strikes me as a program that is indefensible to the American people."

The segments of Sen. Cruz’s questions are available at here and here.

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