Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed under President Obama in 2010. During the first year of Trump's presidency, Cruz sponsored legislation to repeal the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, and was part of the group of 13 senators that drafted the unsuccessful 2017 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act replacement proposals of the AHCA. Hurricane aid In 2013, Cruz voted against a bill to provide a package of federal aid to the Northern East Coast for recovery from Hurricane Sandy because, he said, the bill was "filled with unrelated pork" and "two-thirds of that bill had nothing to do with Sandy". The Washington Post disputed this, writing that "the bill was largely aimed at dealing with Sandy, along with relatively minor items to address other or future disasters." The New York Times wrote that "of 23 examples of extraneous spending that a spokesman for Mr. Cruz provided, all but one—$195 million in discretionary funds for the secretary of health and human services—were Sandy-related or sought to mitigate future storms, as the law required." In 2015, in the wake of severe flooding in Texas, Cruz supported federal aid funding; and in 2017, called for federal intervention as Hurricane Harvey approached the coast of Texas. Immigration Cruz took a "hard-line stance" on immigration issues during the 2014 border crisis and opposes comprehensive immigration reform. He advocates an increase from 65,000 to 325,000 annually in skilled foreign workers entering the United States using H-1B visas. According to McClatchy, Cruz staked out "hard-right immigration stances" during his 2016 presidential campaign. Cruz opposes paths to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children (so-called DREAMers). In February 2018, he was the sole senator to oppose a Republican motion to begin debate on legislation intended to resolve the question of what to do with DREAMers. He has called for the repeal of the clause of the 14th amendment that grants citizenship to those born in the United States. He defends the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant children from their parents, blaming the migrant parents for crossing the U.S. border to seek asylum and claiming that the Obama administration maintained a similar policy. In December 2020, Cruz blocked the Hong Kong People's Freedom and Choice Act, which would give Hong Kongers refugee status, citing the threat of spying by China. He said the law was an attempt by Democrats