Ted Cruz blasts amnesty-first Republicans, demands they listen to the voters

On Thursday, ahead of several Senate votes on a bipartisan immigration deal that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, urged his fellow Republicans to vote no on amnesty.

Admitting that he felt like Bill Murray's character in "Groundhog Day," waking up to relive the same amnesty debates that Congress had in the 1980s and later with the Gang of Eight bill in 2013, Cruz blasted his fellow Republicans for supporting bigger amnesty legislation than the one supported by the previous Democratic administration.

"I find myself flabbergasted at where my own party is in this debate because every proposal that has Republican support that has been submitted begins from a place markedly to the left of President Obama," Cruz declared.

[facebook https://www.facebook.com/SenatorTedCruz/videos/1517714471674181/?notif_id=1518722231729437¬if_t=live_video_explicit expand=1]Recalling that Obama's executive amnesty, the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, was "illegal and unconstitutional," Cruz noted that President Obama declared he would not enforce immigration laws. "At the time, virtually every Republican denounced executive amnesty as unconstitutional, as lawless, as wrong," Cruz said.

"And yet today, far too many Senate Republicans are staking out a place well to the Left of President Obama and DACA on numerous axes."

The bipartisan immigration deal proposed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has the support of the White House and would grant amnesty to approximately 1.8 million illegal immigrants — far beyond the 690,000 or so individuals who benefited from DACA amnesty. Democrats have rejected this offer. They favor a competing bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, that in the Department of Homeland Security's estimation "destroys the ability of the men and women from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to remove millions of illegal aliens" and would grant amnesty to over 10 million illegal immigrants. Additionally, these plans provide a path to citizenship for illegal aliens.

"DACA never included citizenship," Cruz noted.

"Today, too many Republicans are eager to embrace the Democrats' demands that ... 10 million people here illegally should be granted a path to citizenship."

"That's plain and simple wrong," Cruz said, adding that it was unfair to "millions of American citizens" and legal immigrants whose "wages are driven down by those here illegally."

Further, Cruz said amnesty is "inconsistent with the promises made by virtually every Republican in this body. Every Republican who went out and campaigned against the executive amnesty said, 'we will not have amnesty.' Well, now's the time to choose. If this body chooses to grant citizenship to two, three, four million people here illegally, those promises will have been directly broken. That is a mistake, it is wrong."

Cruz drilled the point that Senate Republicans are ignoring the will of the voters who sent them to Washington. Should the Senate pass one of these amnesty bills, Cruz said it would be "incumbent on the House to stop it."

"It's almost as if elections don't penetrate. We need to be listening to the voters. I do not know a single Republican, not one in this body, not one in the House of Representatives, who was elected on the promise 'I will go to the Left of Barack Obama.'"

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