In response to my earlier post about possible ambiguity in what Cruz campaign chairman Chad Sweet said about legal immigration levels during a private meeting with Alfonso Aguilar and other mass-immigration Hispanic Republicans, the campaign sent me the following statement from spokesman Catherine Frazier:
Cruz’s staff reiterates the same principles that Ted Cruz promotes in both public and private. Anyone who truly cares about fixing illegal immigration understands that we must secure the border and enforce the law, and that includes building a wall that works, strengthening e-verify, and enforcing the law including deportation of those who are here illegally.
I’m taking this to mean Sweet did not call for increases in immigration, as the NBC report seemed to imply, and I’m glad to hear it. But that’s only an implication, because this response is about illegal immigration, about which the article was clear in any case. I would have preferred a simple quote from Cruz’s plan: “Halt any increases in legal immigration so long as American unemployment remains unacceptably high.” Even that falls short, since it implies that the floodgates would open as soon as the unemployment rate was no longer “unacceptably high.” But I can live with it for now. So long as that’s actually the candidate’s position and it is indeed reiterated in both public and private.