Ted Cruz knocks Scott Walker on immigration

Washington Examiner ^ | 4/24/2015 | Drucker

[VinL]

Sen. Ted Cruz on Friday took a shot at rival presidential contender Scott Walker for comments the Wisconsin governor has made regarding immigration policy.

Cruz opposes comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for the estimated 11-12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. But the Texan is a big proponent of legal immigration and making adjustments to U.S. law that would facilitate more legal immigration. He criticized Walker for suggesting that he supported limiting legal immigration if it has a negative impact on the wages of American workers.

"There is considerable bipartisan agreement outside of Washington that we need to improve and streamline legal immigration so that we can remain a nation that welcomes and celebrates legal immigrants," Cruz said in an interview with the Washington Examiner during a brief campaign swing through Las Vegas.after cost estimates came in higher than anticipated.

I think it is a mistake for any politician to on the one hand embrace amnesty, embrace a pathway to citizenship for those who are here illegally, and on the other hand seek to restrict or punish legal immigrants," Cruz continued. "I am the son of an immigrant who came legally from Cuba. [President Ronald] Reagan referred to legal immigrants as Americans by choice and there is no stronger advocate of legal immigration in the U.S. Senate than I am."

"I think the right approach is to secure the border, follow the rule of law and embrace and improve legal immigration," Cruz said.

Walker has conceded a change of heart on immigration policy as he gears up to launch a 2016 presidential bid. The governor, 47, previously supported a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants. Now he is opposed. Supporting a pathway to legalization or citizenship could be problematic for a Republican candidate seeking his party's White House nomination.

But in a recent interview with conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, Walker appeared to move farther to the right on immigration than even amnesty hawks like Cruz. Here's what Walker said, as reported by Breitbart. (read more)

[reasonisfaith]

No I don’t.

[chris37]

I have been of a mind for a while now that the eventual outcome of a civilization is that it provides the luxury of being complacent.

We have come to a point in our own civilization where it seems like we have the time to ponder such “grave” problems as glowbull warming and transgender rights and all sorts of other useless garbage that has no bearing on anything.

And we don’t pay any attention at all to our government selling wmd material to our enemies and all sorts of other schemes that it is involved in, and this just boggles my mind.

This is why I have said what is making this all possible is, quite simply, lies. Whatever we have stood for in our past we no longer stand for, and instead we just seem to be swimming circles in a sea of bull sh!t.

And I think we are definitely going to pay a very high price for this in the near future.

[zzeeman]

Yes, it is mind-boggling, and the cost to be paid is extremely high.

[kabar]

Talented qualified immigrants are an engine of economic growth and an advantage we have on most of the rest of the world. To think otherwise is foolish and shortsighted. class.i>

I am surprised that we even have FReepers peddling these myths. First, we are not getting the "Best and Brightest" through our legal immigration policies that bring in 1.1 million legal permanent immigrants a year. 20% lack even a high school degree. Only 12% are merit based. Immigrants have higher levels of poverty, use of welfare, and uninsured for health insurance than the native born. See my post #357.

Second, Entrepreneurship--Immigrants and natives have very similar rates of entrepreneurship — 11.7 percent of natives and 11.5 percent of immigrants are self-employed. Among the top sending countries, self-employment is highest for immigrants from Korea (26 percent), Canada (24 percent), and the United Kingdom (17 percent). It is lowest for those from Haiti (6 percent), Honduras (5 percent), and Jamaica (3 percent).

40% of the largest U.S. companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Recent examples include Google, Ebay, and Intel. Think how many U.S. jobs were created because those individuals were allowed to come to our country. Protectionism won’t work in the long run. It will make us weaker and less competitive. Cruz understands this which is why he has my complete support. Walker didn’t finish college so he may have missed that.

What is your source for the 40% figure? It is the one being foisted on the uninformed using the Habeeb and Leven study that was echoing the same claim being put out by a lobbyist group.

Habeeb and Leven bolster their case that immigrants are especially entrepreneurial by citing an empty statistic from a lobbying group's report stating that "immigrants or their children founded 40% of today's Fortune 500 companies." That report counts a company as founded by an immigrant (or by a person with even one immigrant parent) even when there were multiple co-founders who were not immigrants or the children of immigrants. What's more, the report includes companies such as DuPont, founded in 1802, and Pfizer, founded in 1849. In fact, all but a handful were founded more than half a century ago. Thus, the statistic has virtually no meaning for today's immigration debate.

Habeeb and Leven also note that 25 percent of technology firms established since 1995 have "at least one foreign-born founder." Again, this statistic includes companies with multiple founders, some of whom are not immigrants. It seems almost certain that the actual share of founders who are immigrants is about the same as the immigrant share of the working-age population (17 percent).

We know this because the percentage of immigrants and natives who are self-employed is the same: about 12 percent. Immigrants and natives are also very similar when we look at business income or number of employees. The bottom line is that entrepreneurship is not a distinguishing trait of immigrants as a group.

There are benefits from immigration, of course, as well as costs. And everyone can sympathize with those who want to come to our country legally in search of a better life. But if we are to arrive at a policy that best serves the interests of our country, we cannot rely on exaggeration, wishful thinking, and cliché. Instead, we must confront the facts and formulate policy accordingly.

Protectionism won’t work in the long run. It will make us weaker and less competitive. Cruz understands this which is why he has my complete support. Walker didn’t finish college so he may have missed that class.

Protectionism? How can you equate limits on legal immigration as protectionism? There is not a nation in the world that does not control its borders and limits immigration. Immigration is supposed to serve the national interest. Bringing in hundreds of thousands of unskilled and uneducated immigrants is not serving the national interest. And bringing in skilled immigrants has its limits. We have a surplus of labor with wages declining and labor participation rates at a 38 year low. If we truly had a labor shortage, wages would be going up, not down.

[kabar]

See my post 364. We are not getting the best and the brightest. We are importing poverty.

[kabar]

He changed his position on legalization. Here is what he said yesterday, Mr. Walker told Mr. Failor that his top priority would be securing the border. He also said he favored “making sure the legal immigration system is based on making our No. 1 priority to protect American workers and their wages.’’

Alexander Staudt, the treasurer of the University of Iowa College Republicans, also told Mr. Walker in the meet-and-greet line that he was concerned that by talking tough on immigration, Republican candidates would turn off Hispanics.

“In terms of how wide or how narrow the door’s open, our No. 1 priority is American workers and American wages,’’ Mr. Walker told him. “I don’t know how anyone can argue against that.’’

Both Mr. Staudt and Mr. Failor asked the governor what he would do about the millions of undocumented workers already in the country. Mr. Walker said they should return to their countries of origin and apply for legal entry.

Mr. Staudt liked that answer. “The bigger that number gets,’’ he said, referring to undocumented immigrants, “it’s going to become less economically viable.’’

But Mr. Failor, who has attended several Republican candidates’ events this year, said he was disappointed.

“He gave a conflicting message, in my opinion,’’ he said. “He said he’s not one who believes in spending billions of dollars to deport all these undocumented immigrants. When I asked if he supported a pathway to legal status, he said no, he’d send them back to their country of origin and let them get in line with everybody else. I don’t know how that works within the deportation equation.’’

[kabar]

I understand your position now: SURRENDER

[chris37]

I am just pointing out reality.

You can respond to reality however you want. Maybe you can change it, maybe you can’t.

Time will tell.

If you can implement a solution to having raised generations of people who don’t know anything and believe in a head full of lies perpetrated by an education systems populated by liars and run by a government infested to the hilt with liars and grifters, then please, by all means, save us.

Meanwhile I still support legal immigration for the reasons I stated, and I am not for a moratorium on legal immigration, and I do not support illegal immigration at all.

[ansel12]

No, no anger, I just love America and the American people, and I know that we didn’t survive the democrat’s 1965 Immigration Act and it’s intended purpose, which you endorse and support.

If we had ended mass immigration 20 years ago, we would be much better off, and if if we had never adopted JFK’s plan 50 years ago, we would still be America.

Everything you support about immigration, supports the American left and the democrat party, voting, race issues, the war against Christianity, multiculturalism, anti-Americanism, terrorism, big government, feminism, abortion, gay marriage, everything is made possible by the voters imported by the left since the left changed the immigration laws.

[ansel12]

So the democrats replaced us with foreigners for our own good?

[wardaddy]

The funny thing was I just heard Steve Camarota on Wilcow claim Walker was a bit better on immigration than Cruz

Center for Immigration Studies.....anti amnesty outfit....I think.....like ALIPAC

Only he and Santorum are against increasing legal immigration

Cruz wants to double it...per this guy

It’s a rare area I disagree with Cruz on

Legal immigration is too much in my opinion....over one million a year every year

Half of all immigrants of past 25 years get some assistance

And they don’t assimilate like Europeans did

Duh

Why is that

[ansel12]

Japan should keep Japan for the Japanese.

They should not do what the American left did, start replacing themselves with the populations of Somalia, and Kenya, and Mexico, and Latin America, and all the violent, peasant nations of the world. With immigration rates that have already put them in the minority, and which will make them disappear entirely from their nation’s identity and culture, and leadership within a few decades.

Why would any nation’s people, end themselves?

[ansel12]

So the Japanese are in a sex slump, and you think the answer is to end the existence of the Japanese people and of Japan?

Aren’t you a little overly hung up on temporary economic issues and overly indifferent to what really matters?

America was the greatest nation that ever existed just 50 years ago, today it is not even recognizable, and the new people will totally erase America within a couple of more generations.

[Finny]

Maybe they're out of a job because there aren't enough entrepreneurs to employ them.

Boogie is not only a skilled machinist, he's the kind of guy that would help get any concern off the ground if he committed.

Who employs all those American guys you know?

I stand by my position that it would be suicide stupid to put an embargo in legal immigrants, especially highly skilled and educated ones. They come here and create jobs when they're entrepreneurs. I see it all around me in abundance, here in Southern California. They are fresh blood, and many are patriotic and committed, if new, Americans. How about those American guys you know creating their own jobs? Sorry, but "Americans first" as a justification for barring legal immigrants, STINKS.

It would have prevented my skilled grandfather to immigrate here from Scotland in the early 1900s, and I'll bet it would have prevented someone in your lineage somewhere from ever getting to America, too. It wasn't okay for them but not okay for Boogie because "the time was right back then," it's because it was grounded in a PRINCIPLE. And America became great because of it.

You propose to abandon that principle, and I say that stinks.

[kabar]

Meanwhile I still support legal immigration for the reasons I stated, and I am not for a moratorium on legal immigration, and I do not support illegal immigration at all.

There you go again creating a phony strawman. I am not recommending stopping all legal immigration. The question is how many should be allowed in each year and with what skills. It is a public policy issue. You lack the information to comment rationally, so all you are stuck with are platitudes and generalizations.

[kabar]

CIS is the only think tank completely devoted to immigration. It is labeled by its opponents as “restrictionists.” I work with Steve Camarota and Mark Krikorian. They shouldn’t be compared with ALIPAC, which is certainly on our side, but it is just another grassroots immigration organization. CIS is a scholarly operation that supplies most of the statistics on our side.

[MinorityRepublican]

Japan is different, that is true. But America is a nation of immigrants and I don’t have a problem with immigration as long as it is done legally.

Our ancestors came from somewhere else, remember.

[dfwgator]

Our ancestors came from somewhere else, remember.

We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts! Here's proof: his nose is cold! But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt. Who saw "Old Yeller?" Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end?

Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot? I'm sure.

[ansel12]

America wasn’t founded by immigrants, as it needed more people it started allowing people like themselves to come in, that is ancient history, we filled up long ago and this last 130 million people made up of democrat imports and their offspring, has killed us.

Why do you people pretend to want conservatism and love America, yet fight to import democrat voting people who will never be conservative and who don’t care about America except as a place to make money, by the 10s of millions?

[gorush]

I sense that you misinterpreted my meaning. I’m a Cruz man through and through...Nugent for VP, Do the Teddy!