“Profoundly unfair,” was the description Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz offered for the pathway to citizenship a bipartisan “gang of eight” senators unveiled Monday in their immigration reform proposal.
Cruz praised some facets of the proposal, notably an increase in resources going toward border security and efforts aimed at making legal immigration less burdensome.
“I appreciate the good work that senators in both parties have put into trying to fix our broken immigration system,” Cruz said in a statement. “There are some good elements in this proposal, especially increasing the resources and manpower to secure our border and also improving and streamlining legal immigration.”
Cruz stopped short of offering his approval for the plan in its entirety, however, voicing concern about the plan for a pathway to citizenship, arguing that it is unfair to immigrants who have attempted to legally navigate existing processes.
“I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship,” he said. “To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with [the] rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally.”
Cruz was not the only member of Congress to voice concerns over the message such a “pathway” sends. Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith said it will encourage more illegal immigration.
“When you legalize those who are in the country illegally, it costs taxpayers millions of dollars, costs American workers thousands of jobs and encourages more illegal immigration,” Smith said, according to CNN. “By granting amnesty, the Senate proposal actually compounds the problem by encouraging more illegal immigration.”