RUSH: Full disclosure, I received a phone call from Senator Rubio this morning about an hour ago, a little over an hour ago. He had gotten wind of something I had said earlier this week in response to his interview with a Spanish language network outlet in which he said that legalization must happen first and then border security second. And I said it’s a little disappointing. I was under the impression that Senator Rubio was in or out based on border security. Look, all of this is academic anyway, folks.

The overriding thing to remember here is that this is not supposed to become law right now. Just is. This is supposed to die in the House. Don’t forget, it’s a campaign issue. This is supposed to get through the Senate, supposed to get over there, supposed to die in the House so that the Democrats have a campaign issue for the 2014 midterms. There’s nobody that’s gonna be able to talk me out of that belief. I know we’ve got sound bites from Boehner saying, “No, no, no, we can get this bill passed.” He’s saying that, but I think the design here —

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You disagree with me? I’m looking at the facial expressions. Well, who are you talking to that’s telling you this? Are the people at the National Institutes of Health telling you this? There are conservative Republicans worried this thing is gonna pass the House? Well, if that happens, then something major has gone off track somewhere.

By the way, Snowden has surfaced. I just saw his picture there on TV. Let me get this out of the way. He’s surfaced. Booz Allen has fired him, by the way. And Booz Allen (paraphrasing), “He wasn’t making a 200 grand. Where the hell did anybody get that? We’re paying him $122,000.” They didn’t say he wasn’t making 200. They just said he’s being paid 122.

Snowden says (paraphrasing), “Look, I’m in Hong Kong. I’m not fleeing anybody. I’m not trying to avoid the law. I’m not trying to avoid being caught or whatever.” He talked to a ChiCom newspaper. Anyway, we’ll get into that, I don’t want to get off track here.

The original intent, I’m telling you, of the immigration bill was to die in the House. Now, maybe the regime, the Obama regime has gotten the idea they can get this thing passed now, and maybe they’ll take it. See, I think they think they’re gonna get it anyway at some point. So they’re looking at it, how is it most useful. Anyway, I’ll be surprised if it passes the House. We’ll see.

Anyway, Senator Rubio called, and he wanted to remind me of something he’d said on this program, that something he had said on this program dovetailed nicely with what he had said in the Spanish language interview. So I went back and I got the transcript, and in fact the last time he was here, I asked him, “Let’s get to the bill. The last time you were here, Senator, you were very certain, you assured everybody that until the border was secure, there would not be legalization of a pathway to citizenship.” Now, people who have seen the bill say that what actually happens is that legalization does take place, and then there will be a commission that has 10 years to figure out border security, which is true? Which one of those true?

And Senator Rubio said last time he was on the program, “Well, a couple of points. First of all, the legalization doesn’t begin automatically. We don’t want to wait on legalizing, and I’ll tell you why. My original position was that we wanted to secure the border first and then legalize. The problem is, we have millions of people here now, by some estimates 10 to 11 million, we want to know who they are and freeze the problem in place. I don’t want that number to grow. It behooves us to know who they are as soon as possible so it doesn’t get worse.” He was reminding me that he had indicated on this program that legalization is something that he now thinks has to happen soon in order to identify those who are here so that that number can be stopped and set at whatever it is.

Can I be a little bit of a smart aleck here? Of course I can because it’s my program. We’re in the midst here of learning that the NSA and a lot of high-tech companies and phone companies are providing the regime with virtually every phone call we make. They have access to every e-mail we send, every photo we send, and yet there are 11 million people in the shadows? We’re doing all of this sweeping. We’re doing all of this Hoovering. When it comes to 10 to 11 million illegals we’re told they’re in the shadows and we’ve got legalize them to find out who they are. Yet, on the other hand, the government knows everything about everybody, or can if they want to? So which is it?

There are 11 million, 10 million, 20 million, whatever it is who were here that we can’t find unless we grant them some pathway, unless we do legalization, we can’t identify, they’re in the shadows, they won’t come forward. What good is the spying program? What good is all the surveillance? Isn’t one of the purposes of this to be able to find anybody and then determine what their motives might be? Isn’t this what we’ve learned in the past week or two? From the NSA PRISM, from the NSA Verizon story, to Snowden and what he’s revealed? Not one of us basically has any privacy. Why do these 10 to 11 million somehow escape scrutiny? I mean, are they not using the Internet? Are they not making phone calls?

How are we tagged? Is it our phone numbers? I don’t make phone calls, so how do they follow me on the phone? They can’t. I’m not making phone calls. But they’re following me somehow. Just like they’re a following everybody else. What is it about the 10 to 11 million illegals that keeps them in the shadows? Whatever they’re doing, I want to find out how to do it myself. I want to live in the shadows like they are. I would like to be unreachable by my government. I would like to do something, live somewhere, live in such a way that the regime can’t find me, like they can’t find the 10 to 11 million illegals without legalizing them first. Those 10 to 11 million, they may not know it, but they have more privacy than anybody else in this country. Because we’re being told that we’ve gotta legalize ’em first to find out who they are. Only then will they come out of the shadows. They can’t be found, but you and I can be, (snapping fingers) like that.

So tell me, ladies and gentlemen, any of you high-tech specialists out there, call in, tell me, how do I retreat to the shadows and join the 10 to 11 million illegals in the shadows so that I, too, cannot be found. I might even — well, no, I’m not going to offer any incentives. I tried to go low profile as a New Year’s resolution, and it didn’t work out. I tried to be unnoticed and under the radar, not be in the news. He-he-he. But that’s not my point. They can find us if we’re in the news or not. That’s what we’ve learned, folks.

I don’t mean to be redundant here but isn’t that what we’ve learned lately, in the past couple weeks? They are collecting metadata, so they know every phone call. They know e-mails, photographs, chats, Facebooks, whatever you’re doing out there, it can be tracked. But somehow the 10 to 11 million illegals escape notice. Somehow we don’t know who they are. Somehow we don’t know where they are. We have to create a pathway to citizenship for them. Well, I want what they’ve got. I want the anonymity that they have. How do I become an illegal? That’s the question.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, here’s another aspect of this. Illegal aliens are not citizens yet, by definition, and therefore I’m pretty sure that I’m right about this. Since they are not citizens, there are no laws against the NSA tracking them. They have no constitutional protection. Now, not that it wouldn’t be granted or afforded them, ’cause, as you know, this regime wants to grant constitutional protection to every citizen in the world. But when you cut and dry it, illegals are not citizens, therefore the NSA can just do anything they want to find them.

They do have credit cards, and I think they have cell phones. And not all of them are using burner phones, disposable throwaways, which are harder to track, obviously. Prepaid phones you buy at the local convenience store when you bop in there to pick up your six-pack of Pez or whatever. You use the phone for whatever prepaid minutes and you throw it away. Might be something for some of you people to consider. It ought to be easy for the NSA and whoever else wants to track the illegals, because there aren’t really any laws stopping them. Of course, the laws are not stopping them now from tracking any of the rest of us. My only point with this is that, in the immigration bill, we’re being told that the only way to find out who these people are, is to get ’em out of the shadows.

We want to get ’em out of the shadows. We don’t want to ’em lurking in the shadows. We want to know who they are. We want to find out how many there are, a finite number, we want to stop it, button it down, no more after that. But we’re gonna have to grant them legal status in order to find out who they are. Only that will bring them out of the shadows, and we can identify ’em, tag ’em, do whatever we’re gonna do, and then secure the border.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I’ll explain this again. This is something that really does interest me. We’ve got all the data mining going on with the NSA and the Verizon, PRISM, whatever it is. The bottom line, every phone call, every phone record of everybody making a phone call in this country is being Hoovered, is being vacuumed up and swept up. Somewhere, somebody has access to it and they want to put it through their database, algorithms, whatever. But somehow we can’t find the 11 million illegals. They are in the shadows.

Well, I want to be where they are. Wherever they are, and the NSA, and the regime can’t find ’em, that’s where I’d like to be. We are being told that we have to grant them legality, the pathway to citizenship in order to drag ’em out of the shadows, in order to find out who they are so that we can put a stop to it. And if we don’t know who the 11 million — that’s the number being bandied about — if we don’t know who the 11 million illegals are, then we can’t identify who’s new and who’s been here awhile. We’ve gotta identify ’em.

Now, the NSA and whoever else is doing data collection can find everything on us, but apparently this is not a way to identify the illegals. The only way to find out who they are is to legalize ’em, right? Well, wherever they are is where I want to be, and that’s why I want a pathway to the shadows. I want to be undetectable. I want to be unknown. I want to be unfindable like they are. I could get off the grid if I could find out where they are. The shadows, where is that? That’s why I’m looking for a pathway to the shadows. They’re looking for a pathway to citizenship; I want a pathway to the shadows. I know it hasn’t worked out. I had a New Year’s resolution to go low profile and, you know, not scare 24-year-old women as much, but it kinda blew up in my face.

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A fee? Oh, pay the government a lot of money. Pay the government to basically ignore me, and thereby end up in the shadows. Who would you pay? Organizing for America? What Obama PAC would you pay, and how much? And even then they’d double-cross me. They’re never not gonna keep track of me, no matter what promises they would make.