RUSH: I sat down with somebody the other day, somebody that’s not particularly politically inclined one way or the other, but still informed, and intelligent, with a very, very established professional career. This person had no idea about the details of the immigration bill that’s winding its way through the Senate. When I told this person, the person was appalled and asked me what I was so worked up about this for.
When I told him about legalization, when I told him there would be one business day for a background check, that there would be eight years of chain migration allowed, that the border fence would be cut in half, he was stunned. He had no clue. By the way, this is why people from the administration and the Democrat Party and the media do not want to address the specifics of this bill and instead talk in generalities and throw names around, like ‘nativist.’ No, they don’t want to poll it! They don’t want to poll it accurately. That’s another thing. They’re trying to appeal to emotion about this on the basis of ‘compassion’ and ‘we can’t do anything else,’ and ‘this is the best we can do,’ and all of that. We had this Washington Post poll that on Monday that said all these senators have gone out home for the Memorial Day recess, and they found less and less resistance. ‘Why, we’re really surprised. It was so exciting. We’re going to come back and get the bill done this week,’ and then late yesterday afternoon, USA Today/Gallup puts out a poll, and it ain’t good, folks. ‘As the Senate prepares to vote on a landmark immigration bill, a USA Today/Gallup poll finds that Americans who have an opinion about it are overwhelmingly opposed, by nearly three to one. Those who have a view say that they are against a compromise; 58% of those surveyed though said they don’t know enough about the legislation to favor or oppose it.’ The polling sample was 1,007 adults from last Friday through Sunday.’
If you go deep into the internals, what you find out is, of the people who were informed about this on the Republican side, they are dramatically opposed this. There hasn’t been any cooling off of this, and it’s exactly as I fretted last week: the administration is risking the solidarity of its base, not just on this, but on such things as national security and the war in Iraq. But this guy that I spoke to, he would be one of the 58% in this poll. He doesn’t have any problem with it, and doesn’t know anything about it. There’s a reason why he don’t know anything about it: because details being presented to him and the news sources that he seeks to access, in whatever limited time he spends accessing news. If you want to find out how this is affecting people, guess who is showing up in fourth place in a couple of presidential polls, one of them being the Rasmussen poll? Senator McCain has plummeted to fourth place. Giuliani’s down a little bit. Thompson’s in second place. McCain has fallen to fourth place, and the only reason I want to mention this poll to you is because somebody’s feeling the wrath of a lot of ‘yahoo’ Republicans on this amnesty bill, and it is Senator McCain. There are a lot of people saying, ‘What the hell are we doing turning over the future of the country to a couple old gray-haired men,’ Ted Kennedy — who hasn’t been right about this in 42 years, and I’ll tell you something, you look at the details of this, and you find out…
David Frum had a great point today at National Review Online. We’ve all been trying to explain to ourselves, trying to understand, what has happened to all these Republicans in the Senate who are going along with this? It just looks like they’ve been snookered. It may not be any more complicated than that. There could be some extenuating circumstances from person to person, but you know, when I mention to people who don’t know anything about this, the one thing that shocks them the most — and it’s hard to say that there is one thing because they’re shocked by a lot of it, but one of the things that seems to be appealing to people who are not terribly informed about this — is the notion that there’s a fine, and they gotta go back home, and they gotta come back and get to the end of the line, and people are asking, ‘Rush, what’s wrong with that?’
I said, ‘Do you realize that none of them will have to do that? If they don’t seek citizenship, they don’t have to do any of that. There is no fine. There are no back taxes, and there is no ‘moving to the end of the line.”
They say, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, just because they’re made legal doesn’t mean they’re on the path to citizenship. They’re two different things, and the moment the president signs this bill, they are legal, and that’s all most of them care about. Citizenship, if they’re going to have to pay a fine, back taxes, and go back home to the end of the line, do you think they’re going to do that after they’re here and they’re already made legal?’
You ought to see their eyes pop open when I mention this to them. They don’t know that. The news has been full of this notion that it’s a $5,000 fine. ‘We’re going to get even with these people and pay their back taxes. They’re going to move to the back of the line! Ah, that’s fair.’ None of that is going to happen, except for those who opt for the citizenship route — and in the ABC/Washington Post poll, one of the silly questions, number 19 it is, on another subject: ‘Will you support or oppose a program giving illegal immigrants now living in the US the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and meet other requirements?’ Fifty-two percent support that, 44% oppose it, 4% have no opinion. Do you realize the question is bogus? The question is absolutely bogus. It is incompetent, it is so bogus. Whoever wrote the poll either doesn’t know the details of the bill or does and wanted to pose a dishonest question to get an answer that they could then write their story to suggest that most Americans are cool with this. There are no fines or other requirements for illegals to get Z Visas. You know, this is the top-secret-part of the bill that the media isn’t leaking: You do not have to pay a fine to live here legally. You will not have to go to the back of the line, to live here legally. This question is as unprofessional, uninformed, and incompetent as any you will find in a major poll, because it presents a premise that is not true. Now, I don’t know if whoever wrote the poll even knows. I couldn’t even hazard a guess. In the old days you would assume that somebody in the Drive-By Media writing polling questions would be informed enough to get the details of the question right. But these days with as much bias and prejudice as there is, I’m not so sure that this wasn’t done on purpose. ‘Would you support or oppose a program giving illegal immigrants now living in the US the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and meet other requirements?’ They’re never going to have to do that, to stay here legally. That’s only if they choose citizenship. Finally, Congressional Budget Office. In fact, I have two stories on this. It’s a great illustration of the disparity of the different worldview that different people in media have.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right. The Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill — the CBO, the official arm of Congress — and the Senate immigration bill ‘will cut annual illegal immigration by just 25%. They say the bill’s new guest worker program could lead to at least 500,000 more illegal aliens within a decade.’ We’ll multiply that by four because these people never get it right, and they furthermore say that many people would remain here, the illegals remain after their Z visas expire. They’ll just stay, because there’s no enforcement mechanism to kick ’em out. There’s no incentive to do anything other than open the borders and bring these people in. Chain migration, the whole business. ‘Jon Kyl, the top Republican in the negotiations, yesterday laid out ‘killer’ amendments that he said will break the grand bargain and cause him to oppose the bill.’ They are these: ‘Creating a separate employer sponsored system of up to 300,000 new green cards; giving temporary workers a path to citizenship, and changing the dates or definitions to allow broader family migration. He said, ‘If any of those passed, I certainly would not support the legislation; I would do everything I can to get it defeated.’
It is our contention all that’s going to happen without any amendments. Now, the Boston Globe today has a story on the CBO scoring of the immigration bill, and the only thing they point out is: Hey, guess what? It’s going to be a net gain to the Social Security trust fund at $26 billion! They don’t talk about any of the problems the CBO identified, or they don’t emphasize them. Two totally different ways of seeing it — and that’s not true, either. It’s going to be a net loss on the balance. Well, the transfer payments. The whole reason for doing this is to expand the government and increase the transfer of wealth. Illegally bill gripes are flooding Republican offices. Peter King says he’s getting the most calls he has since the Dubai Ports Deal. Now, we’ve had stories like in the Washington Post on Sunday. ‘Hey, Rush, back off! You know what? Americans out there are coming to like the bill. Senators say they’re not hear from as many constituents out there.’ Oh, not so! What we know is that the Republican National Committee is having to fire workers at the phone banks because their solicitations are down. The state parties all across the country, state party organizations that are taking the right position on this, are raking in the cash like you can’t believe. They’re getting heat out there. They still are. That Washington Post story yesterday from their poll to the analysis, was as bogus as the New York Times putting the JFK terror plot on page 30 on Sunday.