Ted Cruz immigration plan to suspend high-skilled visas

And if Cruz can win in Iowa, that train is going to be very hard to stop. “You know, the biggest lie in all of Washington and in all of politics is that Republicans are the party of the rich”, he said.

Ted Cruz tore into Marco Rubio on Friday in the latest skirmish in their campaigns’ growing battle over immigration policy, and Rubio’s campaign fired back in a very public way.

“There is a sorting that’s happening”, Cruz said in Lubbock. Among the flaws of the bill was the elemental one that put amnesty before enforcement. Rand Paul singled out opponent Florida Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Chuck Grassley and Tim Scott also “voted to weaken” national security by supporting the bill. But his words can be interpreted different ways. Rubio was the conservative Republican champion of a bill that would have increased the level of immigration. What’s more-while Cruz was open to a form of legalization-it’s also true that his amendment to the Gang of Eight bill precluded citizenship for anyone who received legal status after entering the country illegally.

Literally every Republican candidate, including Donald Trump, supports at least one of the above. But they haven’t been all that specific on how their administrations might apply prosecutorial discretion, if at all.

Rubio says his second step on immigration would be to modernize the legal system to emphasize skills.

But by playing to both sides, Rubio has sparked criticism from the left and right and prompted sharp charges that he’s choosing his position for political expediency. He’s said mass deportation would be impossible and that a few people should gain legal status, but also hedged on whether the people he hopes to deny deportation relief to should actually be deported. Rubio would go farther and allow citizenship, but either position is dismissed as “amnesty” by immigration hardliners.

“I don’t think we need an agitator-in-chief or a divider-in-chief”, said former Governor Bush.

If the Senate immigration bill had passed Congress and had been signed into law in 2013, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the increased number of visas and the reforms in the legislation would result in an $897 billion reduction in the federal budget deficit over the next 20 years. That could be interpreted as a yes. This suggests that voters – already susceptible to anti-immigrant rhetoric – would congregate to candidates with similar reservations, namely Trump and Cruz.

Cruz campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said in response: “Does Sen”.

“He’s great at making flowery little sentences that don’t really mean anything”, said Aurora Farthing, a mother of three who runs a real estate business with her husband in Lubbock, and who prefers Rubio, Carson or Ohio Gov. John Kasich to Cruz. “In fact, when the Senate bill was proposed, he proposed giving them work permits”.

“When I see what Marco has said and done, along with other presidential candidates, that is: Their actions and their comments are a definite concern because they undermine the ability of American families to earn enough to take care of themselves”, said Brooks, a conservative Republican who backs Texas Sen. Alex Conant, a campaign spokesman, pushed the point on Twitter Tuesday, tying the vote to Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama. He supports “enforcing the law” and opposes “amnesty”. “Rubio would advocate for illegal mass data collection from regular American citizens while opposing extra scrutiny for those who are trying to come into our country from overseas”, a Paul spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.