Amendment Text: S.Amdt.1322 - 113th Congress (2013-2014)
SA 1322. Mr. CRUZ submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 744, to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
On page 1076, strike line 20 and insert the following:
SEC. 2215. IMMIGRANT CATEGORIES INELIGIBLE FOR UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, aliens granted registered provisional immigrant status under section 245B of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as added by section 2101, including aliens described in section 245D(b)(1) of such Act, and aliens granted blue card status under section 2211 are permanently ineligible to become naturalized citizens of the United States, except for aliens granted asylum pursuant to section 208 of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1158).
SEC. 2216. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.
Immigration-reform legislation from the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight passed that chamber in June and includes a 13-year path to citizenship. Mr. Cruz pushed unsuccessfully for amendments that would have, among other things, eliminated the citizenship component.
Asked about what to do with the people here illegally, however, he stressed that he had never tried to undo the goal of allowing them to stay.
"The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight," he said during a recent visit to El Paso. Mr. Cruz also noted that he had not called for deportation or, as Mitt Romney famously advocated, self-deportation.
Besides barring citizenship while instituting some level of legalization for those here already, Mr. Cruz has proposed increasing the number of green cards awarded annually, to 1.35 million from 675,000. He also wants to eliminate the per-country limit that he said left applicants from countries like Mexico, China and India hamstrung when they tried to gain legal entry to this country.
Note: RPI and LPR Status links.
Published on Nov 12, 2015 U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing, 5/21/13:
"And I'd like to make a final point to those advocacy groups that are very engaged in this issue and rightly concerned about addressing our immigration system and, in particular, about addressing the situation for the 11 million who are currently in the shadows. If this amendment is adopted to the current bill, the effect would be that those 11 million under this current bill would still be eligible for RPI status. They would still be eligible for legal status and indeed, under the terms of the bill, they would be eligible for LPR status as well so that they are out of the shadows, which the proponents of this bill repeatedly point to as their principal objective to provide a legal status for those who are here illegally to be out of the shadows. This amendment would allow that happen, but what it would do is remove the pathway to citizenship so that there are real consequences that respect the rule of law and that treat legal immigrants with the fairness and respect they deserve. And a second point to those advocacy groups that are so passionately engaged. In my view, if this committee rejects this amendment, and I think everyone here views it as quite likely this committee will choose to reject this amendment, in my view, that decision will make it much, much more likely that this entire bill will fail in the House of Representatives. I don't want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass. And so I would urge people of good faith on both sides of the aisle, if the objective is to pass common sense immigration reform that secures the borders, that improves legal immigration, and that allows those who are here illegally to come in out of the shadows. Then we should look for areas of bipartisan agreement and compromised to come together. And this amendment, I believe, if this amendment were to pass, the chances of this bill passing into law would increase dramatically."