“It’s Offensive!”: Ted Cruz Defends Conservative Position on Illegal Immigration, Rule of Law

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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, now a top-tier Republican presidential candidate, defended the conservative position on illegal immigration based on the rule of law.

“And I will say for those of us who believe people ought to come to this country legally and we should enforce the law, we’re tired of being told, it is anti-immigrant. It’s offensive,” Cruz said at FOX Business’ debate on Tuesday night. “I am the son of an immigrant who came legally from Cuba to seek the American dream.,” he said. “And we can embrace legal immigration while believing in the rule of law.”

TRANSCRIPT

I wanna go back to the discussion we had a minute ago because you know what was said was right, the Democrats are laughing because if Republicans joined Democrats as the party of Amnesty we will lose. And you know, I understand that when the mainstream media covers immigration, it doesn’t often see it as an economic issue, but I can tell you for millions of Americans at home watching this, it is a very personal economic issue. And I will say the politics of it would be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers are bankers were crossing the Rio Grande. Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press. Then we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation.

And I will say for those of us who believe people are to come to this country legally and we should enforce the law, we’re tired of being told it’s anti-immigrant. It’s offensive! I am the son of an immigrant who came legally from Cuba to seek the American Dream. And we can embrace legal immigration while believing in the rule of law and I would note: Try going illegally to another country, try going to China or Japan, try going to Mexico. See what they do. Every sovereign nation secures its borders and it is not compassionate to say we’re not going to enforce the laws and we’re going to drive down the wages for millions of hardworking men and women. That is abandoning the working people.