In a complete reversal, Republican candidate for president Ted Cruz has contradicted himself by saying that he now supports very limited legal immigration, and building a border wall between the United States and Mexico. It seems that what I call “Trump fever” is affecting the campaigns of the other Republican candidates in one way or another. Trump may be the lead candidate for now in the Republican Party, but many Republicans are beginning to worry that attacking immigrants—legal or undocumented—will drive away Latino and Asian voters come 2016. They have a reason to be concerned. The Latino vote was a swing vote in the presidential elections of 2008 and 2012. Even if Republican candidates get most of the white vote, they can still lose the presidential election.

Limiting the number of legal immigrants, and especially immigrants with skills this nation needs for expanding its economy. Is opening a Pandora’s box of failure. The United States, like so many highly developed countries, needs the best, the most skilled people it can get. And they are not always born in the United States. If we had the extremely restricted immigration policies that Cruz is talking about, would we have allowed such geniuses as Albert Einstein, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam? And what about Ted Cruz himself? The United States took in his father Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, so that Ted Cruz could become an American citizen (that and his mother was American). The United States was generous in allowing his father to come to the United States, so would a possible President Ted Cruz shut the very door to those seeking asylum into the United States just like Ted Cruz’s father did? There are a whole list of problems with trying to cut immigration—legal or otherwise—as well as build a border wall between the United States and Mexico, and then try to change the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Have the Republicans learned nothing from their past two presidential election failures?!