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EIB Callers Speak on Immigration Policy

by Rush Limbaugh - Jun 19,2012

RUSH: Jacksonville, Florida. Kenneth, I’m really glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi.

RUSH: The point I wanted to make is that when you deport a young man who is brought over here illegally by his parents as a child, you’re punishing the wrong person. He didn’t commit the crime. His parents did.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: This would be very similar to prosecuting a hostage for participating in the crime of a hostage taker.

RUSH: Well, so… I understand your point. So you’re saying let the kids come in.

CALLER: I didn’t say let ’em come in. I said once they’re here, the crime has been committed already.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: Don’t go after the person that didn’t commit the crime. Go after the person that did commit the crime.

RUSH: Okay. So if we do that, if we go after the people that, quote, unquote, “committed the crime,” then we’re separating parents from their kids. If we send the parents’ home. Which nobody’s gonna go for.

CALLER: Well, they’re… Uh, if you… If the child is very young, that’s true. But if this is someone that has, uh, graduated from high school or served in the military or something like that, it’s — it’s time for him to separate from his family anyway.

RUSH: Oh, ho! Oh, oh! (laughing) Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho. Gotta take a break on that. Oh, no! We don’t do that in America anymore. We don’t!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: But I have to tell you, folks, I cannot believe how unfeeling and cold-hearted our last caller was. I mean we don’t do that in America. We just don’t do that. He said it’s time for him to separate from his family anyway? What cold-hearted thinking on the part of our caller. I’m shocked we have anybody in the audience that thinks that way. You want to know a dirty little secret though seriously? Seriously? Can’t send home the kids. They didn’t commit the crime. Okay, send home the adults. Do you think they’ll leave their kids here? Just a think piece.

Let’s talk about the little crumb cruncher kids. You think if you deport — he said the people committed the crime. If they’re here illegally, the adults, if we send them home, if we deport them, won’t they take their children with them? Other than the 18 year old for whom it’s time to separate anyway? What are they gonna do for health care? Their parents gone, used to be able to stay on the policy ’til they were 26. Seriously, if you send the parents home, the odds are the youngsters will go with them. But then you leave it up to them. I know. I know. It’s not gonna happen. Everybody sympathizes with the policy.

But, see, that’s where everybody’s getting caught up in this and making the wrong judgment. This is not a matter of fault. It’s a matter of law and policy, and if we’re gonna strictly look at it as a matter of fault, then no one could ever be deported, certainly no child ever could be. And when you look at it as a matter of who’s at fault, then you’re involving the heartstrings and the emotion and the pulls and the tugs and everything, and it’s gonna go by the wayside. And law and policy are going to be subordinated to whose fault is it, and then law and policy will not matter. So what’s basically happened, you could say here that Obama just waved his magic wand, created at least another 800,000 anchor babies, if you wanted to look at it that way.

Here’s Olga. Olga in Greensboro, North Carolina. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you? It is certainly a thrill.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: Well, I just wanted to make two points on the immigration issue. As I sat and listened to Obama on Friday and saw him passionately say that this was the right thing to do, I thought to myself when he was finished, if it was truly the right thing to do — I am a Hispanic, by the way — if it is truly the right thing to do for the Hispanic community, why would he not have done it the right way and gone through Congress to do it? But then afterwards I thought, well —

RUSH: No, no, there’s an answer. Because Congress had already defeated it. Do you know what I think? Gotta be very careful here.

CALLER: Well, you might beat me to what I’m thinking.

RUSH: Well, I think that Obama knows the outcome of the Arizona Supreme Court case. And that’s one of the reasons why this happened now. Is your question, if it’s the right thing to do, why now? Why wasn’t it the right thing to do six months ago, two years ago? Why wasn’t it the right thing to do the first day he came into office?

CALLER: Well, especially since he made a promise in 2008 in an interview to Univision saying that he would have a bill to Congress within the first year that he supported on this very topic, and he did nothing when he had both houses. But my other point was that the having to come back and renew it every two years, I thought about it and wonder if he did that on purpose too so that the Hispanic community would have to need him and then vote for him because every two years they would have to go back and renew it, and so there is that catch, “Well, we need him.”

RUSH: Exactly. Exactly right. I wouldn’t dispute that. I would only call your attention to the fact that it was, I don’t know how many years ago, two or three years ago that he publicly stated to La Raza I think it was, (paraphrasing) “Look, back off, I can’t just change the law. My hands are tied. I can’t go above and beyond the Constitution.” Well, that was then, and this is now. And now he’s found the way to do it, the timing for it. And I still think that they’re loading the stuff up, you know, trying to coalesce his base and stuff. I think this is all happening here, folks, way too soon in this campaign. It’s a sign of panic. I don’t think that there’s any question about that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows the outcome of the Supreme Court Arizona immigration case. Just guessing. I know nothing. Nobody does. Just a wild, wild guess. And this is to preempt bad news that’s coming on that front. Olga, thanks for the call. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Good thinking and I’m happy to have you in the audience.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here we go to Jose in Miami. Jose, glad you called. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Two points. The first will be really quick. You were talking about the Arab Spring, I thought back to what Bill Kristol said, I think it was on Fox. He was waxing poetic about Jeffersonian democracy developing in the Middle East, and I just wanted to pull my hair out. But that’s one.

RUSH: Wait. That was when the whole thing first started, right?

CALLER: Correct, yes.

RUSH: Yes, Kristol and the boys, they were thinking it was the outbreak. I remember, yeah, you’re right.

CALLER: That drove me insane. But the main point of my call was, earlier when you were talking about the amnesty by fiat and how the government is not set up, really, to, you know, handle this, police it, or whatnot, and how the folks on the ground who have to deal with it don’t have the information that they, I guess, would need at hand. Consider this. If the folks on the ground start denying people entry, that’s gonna open the floodgate of claims with the EEOC that people are being discriminated on the basis of race, you know, religion, whatever —

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. I’m losing you. If the folks on the ground start denying people entry, you mean at the border?

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: How’s that gonna involve the EEOC?

CALLER: Oh. Very simple. The laws are equally applicable to citizens and noncitizens. And these amnesty by fiat folks are —

RUSH: Wait a minute, you’re saying that somebody trying to get in here illegally is gonna say, “Hey, I tried to get in illegally, and I’m being discriminated against?”

CALLER: Yeah, because of this amnesty by fiat. They will be entitled to the same protections and the folks on the border denied my entry, solely on the basis that I’m Mexican, for example.

RUSH: Well, look, I think I understand what you’re saying. I think the more appropriate analogy would be that if you can get your kids across, and then you can defy the immigration laws long enough, you win. I don’t see a bunch of illegals, after all this, calling Washington and saying, “Hey, I’m trying to get in your country illegally but I’m being denied.”

CALLER: Well, the thing is, no, I’m not saying illegals. What I’m saying is the folks that ostensibly qualify for this amnesty by fiat, that if one of them gets rejected by one of the folks on the ground because the person on the ground says, “You know, I don’t buy your documents or I don’t think you’re credible,” that they can then turn and start squawking that their civil rights are being violated.

RUSH: No, I don’t, because the policy, as absurd as it is, is about people who are already here. It’s not about people trying to get in, and I know what you’re trying to say. You’re trying to say that this is gonna facilitate people getting in because, “Well, look, my cousin’s illegal and you’re not deporting him. Why don’t you let me in?” And sue for discrimination and so forth. Now, I think, if people are just patient, that’s gonna happen anyway. That’s where Obama wants to take this. Obama wants this to end up where there is a de facto, not a border. That’s where he wants this to end up.

I said at the top of the program, I live in Realville, and I don’t know how you do this without first securing the border, and this is kind of what Jose is saying in roundabout way. If you don’t secure the border, you’re opening floodgates, and that’s all any of us have been saying when it comes to comprehensive, meaningful immigration reform. The first thing that has to happen is secure the border, and then start implementing various policies to deal with who’s here. But stop the influx. And nobody wants to do that.

Nobody wants to protect the border. Nobody wants to seal it up. Nobody wants to secure it, more so than it is today. So whatever policy you end up with people who are here, you’re gonna have to have it apply to all those who manage to get here, and then stay here for awhile, defy the immigration law long enough, and they end up winning, particularly if they have a bunch of kids with ’em.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Linda in Paducah, Kentucky. Not far from where I grew up in Missouri. Hi, Linda. Great to have you here.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: I just wanted to make one point about the immigration situation. I haven’t heard it made but it’s so obvious, it sounds kind of lame. And that is that we have the problem with these young illegals now that we do because we did not tend to immigration as we should have in the past when their parents first came over here. It ought to be a lesson to us to do something about it now, the illegal immigration, so that we don’t continue to have these problems.

RUSH: Very, very good point. We wouldn’t have the problem if we’d-a hunkered down earlier.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: Well, we thought we had. Remember Simpson-Mazzoli 1986? Illegal immigration back then… There were three million illegals in 1986, and we had Simpson-Mazzoli, which was to secure the border and prevent anymore from coming in, and we granted amnesty to three million.

CALLER: I wasn’t aware of that.

RUSH: Yep. And Ted Kennedy and the boys said, “We do this one time, then that’s it, and we’re never gonna have to worry about it again. But we need to grant amnesty to these three million,” and we did. Reagan went along with it. It was Alan Simpson and the Democrat who sponsored the bill was a guy named Mazzoli. His first name was “Oil.”

CALLER: (giggles)

RUSH: And as we see, we now look at upwards of 20 million illegals, and we’re back to talking about the same thing.

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: So everybody’s opposed to amnesty, but what does Obama do? Basically grants it here.

CALLER: Mmm-hmm.

RUSH: We’re nowhere near getting a handle on it. But, folks, I’m gonna remind you of something, and I want to try to buck you up with this. Because I’ve checked my e-mail; I’ve looked at the polling data. Two to one, people supposedly love Obama’s idea. People on our side, conservative media personalities on television and radio and in the blogs, all say that they’re sympathetic to the policy. It involves children. What we have here basically are a bunch of people — and this is understandable for two reasons — afraid to come out opposing this policy.

One is it involves children. Two, this was a part of Marco Rubio’s DREAM Act. Well, Rubio has been headed off at the pass here with this. Rubio had not yet lined up full-fledged support for his overall comprehensive immigration plan. He was in the process of trying to get support rounded up. So Obama comes along with this small part of what Rubio was gonna suggest. So if Republicans come out against what Obama has done here, they are also coming out against Rubio, which they can’t afford to do because Rubio is a rising star.

And will be president someday.

Odds are, Rubio will be president of this country someday.

I’m fairly confident.

So they don’t want to cut Rubio off at the pass, so they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. That’s say they’re sympathetic to the issue ’cause it involves children. But I just want to remind you: In the summer of 2007 when the big push for amnesty for 20 million (they still weren’t calling it that, but that’s what it was) happened. The Republican Congress for seven years had not opposed President Bush on anything because of party unity. You don’t do it. But they were at their wits’ end and they were tired of being criticized for supporting massive spending, tired of being ripped to shreds.

So they finally decided to distance themselves from President Bush because he was essentially a lame duck. They asserted themselves. And if you recall that summer, Washington was flooded with telephone calls and faxes and e-mails and FedExes and UPSes. That town was swamped with communications from people who wanted no part of amnesty. They wanted no part of 20 million illegals being made legal. They wanted no part of it. And they shut it down.

You, the people of this country, shut it down.

And it’s because of that that this very plan that Obama implemented Friday went down to defeat in Congress. Obama basically said, “I don’t care what Congress did. I’m gonna make this the law of the land with the stroke of my pen.” He did it. The sentiment in this country — when the pedal hits the metal, when the rubber hits the road, the sentiment in this country — has not changed. There is not majority support for amnesty for ten people, much less 20 million.

And whatever the polling on this is now — this immigration — if it approaches amnesty, there’s gonna be hell to pay for anybody who supports this. My point is, I think this is ultimately not gonna end up moving Obama forward. It’s gonna hurt. All he’s doing now is trying to shore up a base that was abandoning him. Hispanics. I can show you a poll here that 20% of Hispanic voters are now deciding they’re not gonna support Obama. In North Carolina, the same thing percentage of blacks say they’re not gonna vote for Obama. He’s doing all this to shore up his base.

And in the process shoring up his base, he is irritating the true vast majority of the mainstream of this country. He’s between a rock and a hard place. He’s got nowhere else to go. He can’t run on his record. He can’t run on the future, other than to scare people about Romney. So all he can do is try to give away the store to every wacko extreme or otherwise minority group in this country. And that’s why I say: Don’t be surprised if he forgives student loans come August or September.

Don’t be surprised if he proposes forgiving mortgages that are underwater come September. ‘Cause that’s all he’s got. He doesn’t have universal love. He doesn’t have, “He’s The Messiah!” He doesn’t have any of that anymore behind him. There’s no wind in his sails. Everything for him is a headwind. So he’s doing all he can do. And the Constitution compared to his reelection? Doesn’t matter. The border, the southern border compared to his reelection? Doesn’t matter.

All that matters is his reelection.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, I really think, folks, that Barack Obama is the first president in history to run for reelection as a fringe candidate. That is the best way to describe where he is. He’s running for election as a fringe candidate and running against capitalism. No question about it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So I just checked the e-mail. “Hey, hey, Rush? How come the phone calls aren’t melting now in Washington? How come the e-mails and faxes aren’t melting everything in Washington now?” Well, because there’s not a way to stop it. Back in 2007, Washington was flooded with communiques from people saying, “You better not!” They tried to stop it. Obama has done it by executive fiat. It’s gonna have to be handled some way else, like November at the ballot box.


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