Sen. Ted Cruz has long criticized President Barack Obama for an executive order Cruz says effectively grants amnesty to some illegal immigrants. Now he wants a law to clarify the president's powers.

Obama in 2012 signed an order stopping the deportation of some illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children. Cruz said that sends a signal to others looking to get into the country illegally.

"If you're granting amnesty to people who come as kids, other kids will come," Cruz said Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren."

Both political parties bear some of the blame for illegal immigration, he said, because neither has secured the border. But, he added, Obama's executive order is "the direct and proximate cause" of the current border crisis that has seen tens of thousands of Central American children flood across the border and overwhelm the Border Patrol.

Cruz said he has introduced a two-page bill in the Senate that says the president does not have authority to grant amnesty to any new illegal immigrants.

"We should have done our basic job a long time ago," he said.

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