Who Really Owns Ted Cruz?

*This article was first published in June of 2013, in SomosRepublicanos.com. It’s republished here, with the author’s permission, in light of Ted Cruz’s recent entrance into the 2016 Presidential race. Garza sheds light on what he says is a little known fact – Cruz’s close involvement with the John Tanton Network. VL

By Lauro Garza, NewsTaco

US Senator Ted Cruz voted against “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” today.  In case you didn’t know Ted Cruz is the freshman US Senator from the Great State of Texas except he isn’t…from Texas, that is, he’s from Canada.  He’s an immigrant, born of immigrant parents from Cuba and somehow he was elected to the US Senate, with no prior legislative experience, from Texas!  How’d that happen?!

That question and I think it is a very good one will also answer this question: “Who really owns Ted Cruz?”  The answer, I suspect, can be found in his ardent opposition to “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”  The evidence is that in the past during his work in the George W. Bush administration that he fully supported “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” and that it was he who actually prepared the Bush reform plan.  So what changed him into a hard-line “enforcement only” solution advocate?  I think the answer lies back in “Who really owns Ted Cruz?”  But let’s check the other possibilities for a moment if you please.

Cruz represents Texas, a state rapidly growing in population and with a just as rapidly growing Latino population that now numbers just under 40% of the overall.  Most of them, like myself, are of Mexican extraction and most of them find the hard-line “enforcement only” thinking as offensive and smacks of bigotry.  If Cruz thought of himself as a fellow Latino then he would also be offended also and support “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” but as already mentioned that is not the case so Latinos in Texas clearly don’t own Ted Cruz.  What about “economic conservatives?”

Economists are largely in agreement that more immigration is better for an economy rather than less.  In fact, there are well-known principles regarding population growth or birthrate that clearly state that if a nation or economy’s birthrate falls below 2.1 then that economy is doomed.  America’s birthrate, steadily declining for decades, is exactly 2.11.  So, America needs MORE immigration not less.  So, Ted Cruz cannot clearly be owned by “economic conservatives” because Cruz’s policies do not favor growth in our nation.  What about nativists and isolationists?

Who, after all, would want fewer or no more immigration and no more immigrants in America, a nation of immigrants?  Why, nativists, isolationists and bigots, that’s who!  Do they own Ted Cruz?!  Maybe, he is the “Poster boy for NumbersUSA.”

The entire anti-immigration effort as it has been presented these past few years originates in one man, Dr. John Tanton, MD.  He and some of his closest associates were all ejected from the liberal Sierra Club for touting the benefits of eugenics and euthanasia.  Tanton himself, a radical environmentalist, thought the best solution to the threatened environment in America was to have fewer people so he founded a Planned Parenthood clinic in his home state of Michigan.  Not satisfied with horribly killing babies he sought to stop the incoming “brown tide” of Latinos who to his horror have a prodigious birthrate.  He the set about founding several entities dedicated to ending immigration in America.  They decided to attack Latinos first and they with the help of a brilliant attorney, Kris Kobach, found the solution in SB-1070 and other bills like it.  Tanton and others founded FAIR, “Federation of American for Immigration Reform” which Tanton thought would be clever to cover his organization against immigration reform with a name that sounded in supportthereof.  A close friend and associate of Tanton, Roy Beck, founded NumbersUSA with Tanton’s help.  Their effort, like FAIR’s, was to convince Republicans that “any” is “too many” and that “all of them will be Democrats anyway!”  And it worked!!  Republicans adopted immigration policies written by radical environmentalists from Planned Parenthood!  And!! Ted Cruz is their “Poster Boy!”

So, who really owns Ted Cruz?  He walks and talks like the nativists from the Tanton Network and he has clearly been supported by them, so…you do the math.

Lauro Garza is a retired Texas Master Peace officer, former Federal Special Agent and Adjunct Professor of Criminal Justice.  Since 2008 he has worked as an essayist, journalist covering politics in Texas and as a  historian appearing PBS documentaries on Latino issues.