Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is one of the most outspoken opponents of the bipartisan immigration reform bill currently being debated in the chamber, but his own father's path to citizenship was neither straightforward nor completely honest.

Cruz's father allied with Fidel Castro's communist forces to overthrow U.S.-back dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. After being jailed and beaten by Batista's forces, Cruz's father decided to leave Cuba for the United States.

"The only other thing that I needed was an exit permit from the Batista government," the elder Cruz said recently. "A friend of the family, a lawyer friend of my father, basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit."

Cruz's father was granted political asylum in the United States, even though he had been a supporter of Castro. Then he had his American wife moved to Canada, where Ted Cruz was born, before moving back to the United States. Cruz's father did not become a U.S. citizen until 2005, nearly 50 years after he first left Cuba.

But the younger Cruz has emerged as an advocate of strict immigration rules, opposing a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

Cruz has proposed a plan that would eventually grant undocumented immigrants permanent residency, but not citizenship, which would prevent them from ever being able to vote.

He rails against people who come to the United States illegally, decrying any "special treatment" for immigrants who didn't "play by the rules, yet holds up his father's story as exemplary of the right way to enter the country.

The merits or drawbacks of Cruz's plan aside, he seems unaffected by any dissonance caused by his disparate treatment of his father's story and the plight of millions of people currently in the United States who were unable to avail themselves of an easily bribed contact, lax student visa rules or a marriage to an American citizen.