Cruz added that he tried unsuccessfully to pass an amendment to the bipartisan immigration bill that passed the Senate in 2013 that would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving citizenship but still allowed them to obtain permits to live and work in America. Its failure, he said, showed Democrats were unwilling to compromise on citizenship at all costs.
Cruz’s anecdote again left things open to interpretation. At the time he offered his citizenship amendment, The New York Times described it as Cruz seeking a “middle ground” between full citizenship and mass deportation in which undocumented immigrants could still work legally in America.
On Wednesday, however, a spokesman for Cruz, Brian Phillips, clarified to msnbc on Twitter that this interpretation was incorrect and Cruz merely offered the amendment as an exercise to prove Democrats’ obstinacy on citizenship. It was not an endorsement of the work permit component of the bill that his amendment left intact.
“Cruz’s amendment had nothing to do with that issue,” Phillips said.
Cruz offered an unambiguous defense of greater legal immigration, where he boasted that he had offered to expand an annual cap on H1B visas for high-tech workers “fivefold” in order to attract more talent to the United States...." Ted Cruz tiptoes around immigration at Hispanic business event