×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu


RUSH: The Senate is supposed to vote on its big bill today, and despite the name the name on this thing — Hagel-Martinez, the “compromise” bill — don’t forget this bill was really written by Senator Kennedy and Senator McCain and has been amended a number of times with other senators offering compromise proposals, and that’s how you get to Hagel-Martinez. But it’s basically a bill written by Senator McCain along with Ted Kennedy. Senator McCain was on Larry King Alive last night, and King asked him about this story that appeared in the New York Observer, in which he referred to people like me and Lou Dobbs as “nativists” and agitators and we are the problem in getting this bill passed. Larry King says, “New York Observer said you recently criticized what you called ‘nativists’ elements of the GOP. Is that true, and what were you talking about?”
MCCAIN: I criticized elements that take an impractical view of this. I don’t know — I don’t think — that was not from somebody who was there, but somebody who heard from — I don’t think I used that word. I respect the views of my Republican colleagues who don’t agree, and I think that’s an important part of this debate.
RUSH: Is that right? I don’t have the story in front of me but I thought the person that supplied the quotes of what McCain said was a person who was there, and I thought the person was named. Some of the people that were there were certainly named. So, at any rate, King says, “In the 2000 campaign where we did many interviews. You consider yourself a ‘maverick.’ You said you did. You were proud to carry that banner because you march to your drum. Do you still consider yourself a maverick?”
MCCAIN: I march to my own drummer, and always have, but it’s grounded in a fundamentally conservative Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan philosophy, and does that mean that sometimes I depart from a lot of the members of my party on certain issues? Well, this immigration issue is obviously not pleasing to the right of my party. I think it’s — I’ve gotta do w-what I know is right, and through my experience and knowledge and age (laughs), have shown me, I — I — I really have been given both the curse and the gift of knowing what’s right and what’s wrong.
RUSH: Moving forward now to the Today Show, this was this morning. Katie Couric said, “Why do you think, Senator McCain, that this immigration business has become such a divisive issue among the Republicans?”
MCCAIN: Well, because states like mine, Katie, are devastated by illegal immigration. Uh, people are angry and frustrated. This is what causes the Minutemen, uh —


RUSH: Stop the tape! Stop the tape a minute! So what? You don’t hear them. He obviously knows it, but it doesn’t matter, otherwise he wouldn’t be saying what he’s saying and proposing what he’s proposing in dealing with the problem.
MCCAIN: — a thousand people demonstrated in Phoenix against what the House had done. This is a polarizing issue but aside from the Iraq war, most Americans think that this is one of their highest priorities, so we should act. That’s why they send us here (giggles), and so I think that there’s been some goodwill gestures from the House side. I hope that we can sit down. And the way we got this through the Senate was bipartisan. I think that’s the way we ought to get an overall agreement, Democrats and Republicans sitting down together, working out a problem, which is what the American people would like us to do.
RUSH: I can’t believe that you just don’t get it! What you’re doing is not what the American people want you to do, and it’s not why they sent you there, and the solution to this is not getting members of the House to agree with you. I’m told that Karl Rove went up to Capitol Hill yesterday and spoke to 20 Republicans in the House, and was trying to change their minds, and I’m told that 19 of them told him no deal, no dice, that he was not persuasive in getting members of the House who totally oppose this Senate bill to change their minds. Senator McCain, by the way, has been in the recording studio lately.
(Playing of McCain Be Our Guest Worker song)
That’s Paul Shanklin, another great parody, that song a cover from Beauty and the Beast, “Be Our Guest Worker,” Senator John McCain as portrayed by Paul Shanklin. El Rushbo and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. J. D. Hayworth, also from Arizona, who gets it, has written a piece today in National Review Online: “Call It What It Is. The president’s plan is an illegal-immigrant amnesty. Am-nes-ty: the act of an authority (as a government) by which pardon is granted to a large group of individuals.” Now, J. D. starts this way. He says:
“Last week, I had the honor to travel to Arizona aboard Air Force One with President George W. Bush to see firsthand the situation along the Mexican border. President Bush is a good man, and when he is right I am among his strongest supporters in Congress. But on the issue of illegal immigration, he is profoundly wrong. In Arizona, President Bush said: ‘First of all, in this debate … nobody should be given an automatic citizenship. That’s called “amnesty.”‘ But this is a strange definition of amnesty, considering that illegal aliens aren’t breaking the law by trying to become citizens ? they are breaking the law by crossing the border illegally.


“If you let them stay here, if you pardon them for their crime of entering the country illegally, that’s an amnesty. The president is trying to redefine amnesty because he knows that admitting his plan is an amnesty would doom it. But in fact, Bush wants to add eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants in addition to letting them stay here. This makes his plan more than an amnesty ? call it an amnesty plus. The White House claims that the president’s plan is not an amnesty because illegals will face penalties and ‘benchmarks.’ Here is what Tony Snow says awaits those who are allowed to stay under the president’s plan: … you (the illegal alien) will pay fines, you will have a criminal penalty; you will also have to pay taxes; you will also have to keep your nose clean, you can’t break the law; you will also have to stay continuously employed … you will have to pay your taxes, you will have to have a secure, tamper-proof identification.
“And when all of that is done, you get to go to the back of the line, and you wait, what, 11 years or more for a chance to become a citizen, at the end of which you have to have a command of English, as well, to be able to become a citizen. Now, with all those benchmarks, it is hard to square that with the idea of amnesty.” Well, really? “Let’s go through it. Illegal aliens will have to ‘pay taxes’: That’s no penalty; they’re supposed to pay taxes. In fact, according the Sen. Chuck Grassley, under Bush’s plan illegals would have the option to only have to pay three of their last five years in back taxes,” and that is on Senator Grassley’s website. He has a list: “The Top 10 Flaws” of the Senate’s immigration bill, and that’s one of them: they only have to pay their back taxes for three or five years.
“They have to ‘keep their nose clean’: Big deal. So does everybody else. They have to get a tamper-proof ID card: Oh, the humanity! They’ll have to stay employed: But isn’t that why they came here, to do jobs Americans won’t [do]? They’ll have to learn English: That’s [not a penalty. It’s] a benefit to the illegal. Most of these ‘benchmarks’ would be required of any legal immigrant. They are in no way burdensome, yet [The White House] makes them sound almost oppressive. The only real punishment on the entire list is the fine. Know what it is? A measly $2,000 payable in two $1,000 installments. When you consider what illegals get for their two grand, it’s the deal of a lifetime. The penalty for using a phony Social Security card is a fine of up to $250,000 and/or five years in jail.
“But Bush wants illegals to get pardoned for that serious crime and all their other immigration-related crimes. In the president’s plan, illegals get to have what they earned illegally counted toward Social Security benefits for themselves and their survivors. They get to send their children to American schools and bring their family into the country. They get access to public services, including the best health care in the world, and they get to enter and leave the country freely. In other words, they get to do everything a regular citizen can do except vote and serve on a jury. To top it off, illegals are allowed not only join the citizenship queue, but also to legally live and work here while they wait.
“This privilege is worth thousands upon thousands of dollars for any individual illegal. And for the child of an illegal who is born in the United States and thus becomes an automatic citizen during this time, the privilege is almost priceless: John O’Sullivan writes that the going rate for a green card on the world market is $100,000. If for some reason you still think Bush’s plan is tough on illegal immigrants, ask yourself what would happen if we set up a booth at the border charging $2,000 to come and live and work in the U.S. with the possibility of citizenship down the road. My guess is the line would stretch from Nogales to Buenos Aires and we’d erase our budget deficit overnight. The idea that this plan would be onerous for illegals is insulting, especially to legal immigrants who have patiently gone through the laborious process of lawfully coming into this country. The American people see through this…spin.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Thomas Sowell weighing in, “Bordering on Fraud, Part III — Some people are worried that amnesty will give illegal aliens the same rights that American citizens have. In reality, it will give the illegals more rights than the average American citizen. Since most of the illegals are Mexican, that makes them a minority. Under affirmative action, combined with amnesty, they would have preferences in jobs and other benefits… Illegals who graduate from a high school in California can already attend the University of California, paying lower tuition that an American citizen from neighboring Oregon. Under the supposedly ‘tough’ immigration bill in the U.S. Senate, illegals don’t have to pay all the back taxes they owe.
“An American citizen gets no such break from the government and can end up in federal prison, like Al Capone. If an American citizen gets stopped by the police for a traffic violation and the cops discover that he is wanted for some other violation of the law, they can arrest him for whatever else he has done. But if an illegal alien gets stopped for going through a red light and the police discovers that he is in the country illegally, in many communities the cop is forbidden to arrest him for that — or even to report him to the feds. If an American citizen forges a Social Security card in order to get a job, he can be arrested.
“Under a provision recently passed by the Senate, illegal aliens who forged Social Security cards not only get a pass, they get to collect Social Security benefits. The great majority of senators who voted for that provision were Democrats, and they prevailed because they were joined by a small minority of Republicans, led by — surprise! — Senator John McCain. After similar defections on judges and free speech, Senator McCain may give opportunism a bad name. What the immigration bill in the Senate has become is just another attempt to pander to another special interest, in disregard of how that affects the country as a whole,” and this is exactly it.
I mean, there are a lot of things going on in this bill, but it’s clear that this is pandering to a future group, large group of voters, and pandering to a current group of people that would be sympathetic to them, in total disregard for the voters who have elected these senators to sit in the US Senate today. The voters who have sent them there are being totally ignored, thumbed at, in exchange for the possibility of even more votes down the road from this giant influx of people which this bill makes really no effort to stop. “Much is made of the fact that there are supposedly 12 million illegals in the country already. The last time illegal aliens were given amnesty, back in 1986, that led to even more illegal aliens coming in afterwards. Do we want 20 million or 30 million more illegal aliens in the future?


“Do we want to change the very composition of the American population, and with it the values of the country? There was a time when immigrants came here to become Americans. But there are powerful pressure groups in this country, extending far beyond the immigrant community, doing their best to keep foreigners foreign and force Americans to accommodate their foreign language and culture in the name of ‘multiculturalism.’ We have seen what havoc such notions and practices have created after mass immigration under ‘guest worker’ programs in Europe, especially after the Muslim riots in France.
“Do we want that in the United States? Most of the first generation of immigrants may want nothing more than a chance to work and will be happy to be here instead of in Mexico. But second generations born in this country compare their situation not with the situation in Mexico but with what other Americans around them have. There are plenty of people, both inside and outside the immigrant community, who will fan their sense of grievance and exploit their resentments. This is not peculiar to people from Mexico. Europe has already experienced this…The political strategy of this package deal legislation is to give immediate and irrevocable special benefits to some and make pious promises about the future to get all this past the others.”
There’s something else to consider, too: “Under current law, simply entering the country illegally can result in a six-month prison stay and a $250,000 fine. Aiding in that crime carries a similar fine and a five-year prison sentence. Once ordered deported, an illegal racks up $500 per day of continued ‘illegal presence.’ In addition, there are the perjury and false statements associated with fraudulently filling out federal tax forms. Each instance carries up to a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
“Also, there are crimes relating to the misuse of Social Security numbers needed to obtain work. Those crimes can result in five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.” So let’s review: Under the Senate’s amnesty plan, a US citizen committing forgery and tax fraud could get 25 years in jail. An illegal alien committing forgery and tax fraud, US citizenship is what they get! No jail time, and they get to keep the Social Security benefits of the forgery and the fraud — and yet they maintain that this is not amnesty.

END TRANSCRIPT

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This