Marco Rubio Attacks Fellow GOP Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz on Immigration Policy, Accuses Rival of Political Pandering
With the Iowa caucuses just a couple of weeks away, GOP Presidential aspirant Marco Rubio attacked his fellow Republican candidate Ted Cruz over his policies on immigration and accused him of changing his position about the subject.
Cruz and Rubio, both sons of Cuban immigrants, trails leading candidate Donald Trump in several national polls. According to ABC News, the two candidates have spent their time throwing vitriol to each other back and forth, with both pointing out their rival's policies regarding immigration, specifically illegal immigration.
Rubio lamented that Cruz failed to show consistency with his record regarding the matter. The Florida senator said, "When it comes to Ted, he has changed his positions on immigration all over the place."
He then said Sen. Cruz used to be for birthright citizenship, a law that lets a person be granted U.S. citizenship via means of his or her place of birth. However, Rubio said that, now, his political opponent changed his views and is now against it.
In a similar report by CNN, Rubio accused his rival of political pandering, as his ever changing stance and policies are based on a political calculation, rather than genuine principle.
"He used to go for legalizing people that were here illegally. Now he says he's against it. He used to be for a 200% increases in green cards, doubling them; now he says he wants none. And he said he used to be for a 500% increase in guest workers. And now he says he wants zero," Rubio said during an interview.
In addition to immigration policies, he also criticized Cruz over his comments to NSA agent-turned-whistle blower Edward Snowden, WVTM13 has learned.
Apparently, a couple of years ago when the NSA Surveillance scandal blew up, Cruz praised Snowden and said that he did America a great public service.
It should be noted that despite being the most conservative of the Republican candidates, Cruz repeatedly opposed the proposal to revive NSA's massive surveillance and said that it has not really prevented any of the recent terror attacks that happened.
Cruz was a co-sponsor of the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which now allowed government authorities to only collect specific data from telephone companies, compared to getting and storing all of U.S. citizen's data.
Cruz countered that the old surveillance program that collected bulk data of American citizens is ineffective, therefore the government "should not shy away from smarter policies."
His camp also hit back at Rubio and said that Rubio's position on national security was incoherent and dangerous.
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