Rand Paul Invokes Paris Attack to Swipe at Rubio on Immigration

Checkity check. Criminalizing visa overstays? Yep, that too. Strengthening E-Verify? Oh yeah. Nary an enforcement mechanism is left unmentioned. He was on strong ground in arguing that illegal immigration drives down a few wages and that “the rich do great with big government” – a great theme for Republicans next fall.

Rubio cited an amendment offered by Cruz, who “in fact bragged about the fact that he did not undermine the pathway to legalization for people that were in this country illegally”.

Earlier this week in an interview on the Laura Ingraham Show, Cruz laid out the serious abuses by major corporations of the H-1B visas over the past few years. Neither did Cruz when a reporter asked him about it directly. “They would have had background checks and they would have had a much higher degree of scrutiny”. Cruz opposed the bill, but he did support increasing legal immigration, one stance Rubio pointed to in making the comparison. What would he do about H-1B visas as a candidate? This will stop, and the H1-B program will be suspended until we can be certain that the program is no longer being abused.

Children born in the USA would not be Americans unless their parents were, he said, a policy that would require changing the 14th Amendment.

Actually, wait, hold that thought. Aside from the economic impact of illegal immigration, Cruz warned that a porous southern border makes the nation vulnerable to Islamic State fighters and deadly diseases like Ebola.

Under Cruz’s plan, the government would freeze legal immigration levels so long as labor participation rates remain “below historic averages”.

“Listen, the commonsense principles that most of us understand and most Americans agree with on immigration are not complicated”, he said in a speech in Florida.

Cruz announced his immigration plan ahead of a possible Senate vote next week on an immigration bill he’s been pushing to boost penalties for immigrants who illegally re-enter the country after getting deported. “I am the son of an immigrant who came legally from Cuba”. He did not address what he would do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US today.

In fact, most of the audience probably did not understand that Cruz was taking a jab at Rubio when Cruz said his plan to slash the federal budget included eliminating “corporate welfare, like sugar subsidies”.

He emphasized the distinction between embracing legal immigration and opposing illegal immigration as recently as three days ago at the Republican debate. But, when the conversation turns to legal immigrants, and who gets in and who doesn’t, another ugly “-ism” often rears its head: elitism. That’s why he’s always been careful to extol the glories of legal immigration. Marco Rubio (R-FL) right in to a corner on immigration.

Cruz and Rubio were elected with tea-party backing, but Rubio upset much of that base when he sponsored the immigration bill.

“Had I not talked about illegal immigration, I don’t even think you’d be talking about it”, Trump bragged Friday evening. He said he wants to improve the legal immigration system and praised “Americans by choice”, as former President Ronald Reagan called legal immigrants. Bush later issued a statement calling the Paris attacks “an organized effort to destroy Western civilization and we need to lead”.