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The Limbaugh Compromise: Build the Wall, Keep the DREAMers

by Rush Limbaugh - Sep 5,2017

RUSH: Now, on the DACA business, you know, let’s go back here to this audio sound bite number 1, February 22nd on this program, I talked about a — by the way, do you think everybody knows what this is? I mean, they call it the DREAMer act, the DACA act, and a lot of people — I’m not even sure — let’s run through what this is, folks, because it is the unique and distinct creation by Barack Hussein Obama.

DACA or the DREAM Act is not part of existing immigration, or it wasn’t when Obama enacted it. It is a creation of Obama. He unilaterally implemented it after failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform with Congress, meaning amnesty. It was an end run around the constitutional process for passing laws. Now, in practice, what DACA is, a temporary executive branch amnesty for certain illegal aliens who claim to have entered the country unlawfully as minors.

“They’re children, we can’t punish the children. Oh, my God, we can’t, it’s not their fault they had to come with their parents.” No, they weren’t coming with their parents. If you recall, folks, these were the kids that were on the mule trains and the railroads that were coming in from Central America without their parents. You remember this? They were being settled by the federal government in various neighborhoods in southern California. They weren’t even being fully processed. They were arriving and then they were being placed by the Obama Department of Homeland Security with families all over the country. Remember this?

Remember, it was a never-ending stream of children unaccompanied by their parents. And of course the reaction we were to have was one of great compassion and sympathy, and what we were told was it’s so bad where they’re coming from, Guatemala, El Salvador, these other places, it’s so bad that their parents are sending these kids out alone. That’s how bad it is, less of a risk to put them on the trains or with the coyotes than it is to leave them here.

Now, the plan is all along for once the children get here, well, that’s step one in having their parents admitted, because who can keep families apart, ladies and gentlemen? What kind of society would we be that would keep families apart? So little Johnny DREAMer DACA kid gets in the country, and then his mom and dad want to come in later. This is essentially what the program was. Executive branch amnesty for illegal children, minors, who had entered the country illegally.

With a pen and a phone Obama tried to unilaterally change the immigration status of untold numbers of people. DACA gives illegal immigrants who were under 31 years old as of June 15th, 2007, number one, protection from deportation, and, number two, a work permit. So that’s essentially what we’re talking about.

Now, we can go back, and we can air audio sound bites of Obama claiming he didn’t have this power. He was on Univision. He did a town hall meeting on Google Hangouts, and he had people saying, “Why don’t you just let ’em in? Why don’t you just open the borders and let anybody who wants to come in, why don’t you just do this?” And Obama would say (paraphrasing), “Well, you know, I’m not a king. We have laws here, and I just can’t.” But he went ahead and behaved like a king.

So the amnesty crowd now is saying, essentially, that the United States is responsible for so much suffering in the world that we owe the world a free trip to our country. Anybody that wants to improve their lives, we should let them in.

So here comes Trump, and he’s remembering his base. The reason Donald Trump got elected — and there are many — but one of the reasons, the biggest reason at the top of the list is his position on illegal immigration, closing the borders. So Trump was true to his base in his announcement that he was gonna end the program but in a six-month period of time. The reason for that is because the existing law really isn’t a law. It’s executive action that Obama took that’s outside the Constitution.

Trump is throwing it back to Congress and saying, “Deal with it. We’ve got to have an actual legislative and statutory solution to this problem. We cannot continue to go on this way.” Well, the problem is that the Congress has been all over the ballpark on this. Paul Ryan, prior to Trump coming along, was dead set against this. Now that Trump is in the White House, Paul Ryan doesn’t think that we should change DACA. And he’s not alone.

There are many Republicans in Congress who, when Obama was president, criticized it, thought it was untoward, thought it was unconstitutional, thought it was improper. Now that Trump is in the White House, they don’t want to change it. Because this is what the Chamber of Commerce wants. This is what donors want. This is one of the many phases or stages, if you will, that gets us to full-fledged amnesty, comprehensive immigration reform.

So Jeff Sessions went out and announced the administration position this morning. We will have that. Now, I advanced an idea on this way, way back in February, and it’s amazing how this idea has caught on. It’s got a lot of people supporting it. It’s got a lot of people afraid of it. The Democrats are routinely attacking it, which means it’s a great idea.

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RUSH: It’s the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals. That’s what DACA is or DACA, however you wish to pronounce it, the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals. Now, let’s go back, February 22nd, 2017, on this program. I discussed a possible compromise for the DREAMers staying in the country, ’cause they’re children, of course, and you know the sentiments that exist toward the children. I mean, nobody wants to kick a bunch of kids out of the country, right? I don’t care if they’re budding little Al Capones. People just don’t want to do it. It’s the children, you know, the people the Republicans starve with school lunch program cuts and such. Nobody wants to do that. So I came up with a compromise.

RUSH ARCHIVE: In order for the DREAMer thing to be acceptable, the rest of this stuff has to be by the book. No amnesty for anybody other than the DREAMers. We enforce existing law. We turn the Border Patrol agents loose to find people they already know exist and they already know where they are and deport them. People that have committed crimes, people that have been accused of crimes, they’re subject to deportation. People who’ve been convicted of committing crimes.

These are all people that are not citizens. They’re illegally here in the first place, and deporting them is exactly according to existing law. If that happens, and if they move on the wall, if they move on strict border control, then the DREAMer thing is a worthwhile compromise. You’re looking at me like you’re incredulous. He thinks I’ve set off an earthquake here.

I don’t know what the politics are of rounding up a bunch of kids. I know. I know each of these DREAMers has two parents, and if you have 750,000 DREAMers, that’s the number, then you gotta multiply it by two or three. I understand that. But even after you do that, we’re not talking 11, 12, 15, 20 million here. We’re not talking comprehensive immigration reform.

No, I’m just saying that the DREAMers, if they’re properly defined, if you properly define DREAMers and leave it at that, it’s a small price to pay to get the problem under control. And there’s gonna be have to be some price to pay for getting it under control.

RUSH: I caught flak from all sides back then on February 22nd, but I caught a lot of support too. Folks, there’s nothing that tells me that in the end we’re going to round up a bunch of crumb crunchers and put ’em back on the train and send ’em out. There needs to be something gotten for it. There needs to be a price, and it would be a great thing, couple this, say with building the wall. I mean, you go all-in on border enforcement. Now, Trump has decided to end it, but there’s a six-month waiting period before it is initiated. And that ostensibly is to give Congress time to actually come up with a legislative solution. They don’t want to touch it, other than to go full bore amnesty for everybody because that’s what donors to both parties want.

And I’ll tell you, folks, what Trump did today via Sessions, it’s almost along the same lines as pulling out of the Paris accords. It’s rocked ’em. They didn’t think it would ever happen. “Trump is not this callous. Trump is not this cold-hearted.” But Trump knows his base, and he knows the impact all of this has had on the American economy and American jobs. And he’s following through on one of his most predominant campaign commitments.

Now, this morning on the Today show, Matt Lauer spoke with White House correspondent Kristen Welker of NBC about the idea that Trump is gonna end the program. Matt Lauer said, “What’s the likelihood members of Congress can come up with a fix for this?”

WELKER: In the words of one top Republican who I spoke to, the fight over DACA will either unite the Republican Party or tear it apart. You have establishment Republicans who want to find a fix, but for many on the far right, they just think DACA goes against the rule of law and think it should be scrapped altogether. But there’s some buzz about a potential compromise that could bring both sides together, legislation that would, for example, fund the border wall. That’s critical to Trump’s base while also preserving DACA.

RUSH: See? See? All the way back on February 22nd, I, El Rushbo, laid the groundwork here, and now people are starting to say, okay, that’s a good compromise here. Now, she’s wrong here. The Republican Party’s being torn apart long before this thing came along today, long before the whole subject of DACA came up. The Republican Party is being torn apart by itself. The Republican Party is tearing itself apart because it doesn’t have, at least on Capitol Hill, it doesn’t have the wherewithal to get behind the president. For some reason they just can’t do it. Well, you know why. We’ve been through it every which way from Sunday.

Thomas “Loopy” Friedman of the New York Times on Squawk Box on CNBC today, question: “Weigh in on this DREAMer situation, Loopy. A lot of companies have come out over the weekend against what they think Trump’s gonna do, i.e., cancel the program. Is there a way to thread the needle here,” O brilliant one?

FRIEDMAN: We need a strategic immigration policy. By the way, I’d happily give Trump his wall. My view on immigration is I’m for a very high wall. I believe a country has to control its borders. I’m for a high wall with a big gate. So assure Americans that you can control the border and then have a rational immigration policy that can attract the high-IQ risk-takers that have made this country, and Silicon Valley in particular, what it is. And also the high energy, lower skill workers, and do it in a rational way. We need a compromise.

RUSH: Wait a minute. Did I just hear Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times say he’s for a very high wall? Did I just hear that? You just heard that. I was unaware that Thomas L. Friedman was in favor of a wall. That puts him on the same side of an issue with Trump.

Now, this high-IQ immigrant thing that he’s talking about, see, everybody’s focused on Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is where all the brilliance is. Silicon Valley, they’re all in favor of open borders immigration, ’cause that’s where they need to get the big IQ talent. Folks, you know as well as I do what they’re talking about there is the H-1B visa, and you know what that is.

The H-1B visa is a way to bring in similarly educated, brilliant people from overseas and have them replace existing brilliant employees at much less pay. At the Disney corporation existing employees had to train their H-1B replacements who were gonna be paid half what they were being paid. So this is not as clean cut and simple as everybody would have you think.

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RUSH: We’ll start here with Bob in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Glad you called, sir, and it’s great to have you. How you doing?

CALLER: I’m doing fine, Rush. It’s a pleasure to talk with you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I’ll be brief. My thinking on the DREAMers is that they should take the citizenship test. If you’re currently 16 or over, you should take it. In the event that you don’t pass it, you have three months to pass it again. When you turn 16, you take it, or earlier if you wish.

RUSH: Why are you being so mean? I mean, these are kids. Why do you want to force this kind of — I mean, this is a huge barrier.

CALLER: No, not really.

RUSH: Citizen test?

CALLER: There are plenty of people that come from other countries and barely speak the language that are able to learn this and take the test. And if our teaching system is so good, then they should be able to easily take this test.

RUSH: All right. Well, what if they fail? Even after your three-month period of time to study and learn or maybe get the answers and cheat, what if they fail? What do you do?

CALLER: And that’s a problem. But when we’re talking about 800,000 people out of 320 million, it’s not like we’re talking about a large section of the population.

RUSH: Well, wait a minute. But each of these 800,000 has at least a parent.

CALLER: Then they should have an incentive. There should be an incentive to do it.

RUSH: The incentive should be — I like your idea, teach ’em citizenship. And a test, fine. You just keep teaching it ’til they get it. And rather than, you know, kick them out if they fail even once or two times. But there’s nothing wrong with that, having people actually become part of American culture and understand, it’s a good thing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me summarize Jeff Sessions’ announcement here. We’ve got three sound bites, but time is at a premium here. He basically said that the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, which is the Obama unconstitutional executive action amnesty for illegal aliens of a certain age. That’s all it was, I think, all it was. It’s just short of amnesty for everybody. It was amnesty for people under a certain age, Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals.

Jeff Sessions says it has been rescinded, which back when Obama put this into action, that was the position of the House Republicans. They said, “We can’t do this, Obama, it’s unconstitutional.” And they were against it. Now they’re all for it. Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. Jeff Sessions: “We need a new law that takes the DREAMers into account. We need a law, we need to replace executive action with something statutory.” And so he said Congress must act.

Now it’s in the hands of Mitch McConnell in the Senate, Paul Ryan in the House, to address immigration law. And they really don’t want any part of it, and they’ve got plenty else to do as it is. Now, the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, this communist leftist, Tom Perez, was on TV screaming about this after Sessions made his announcement at 11 o’clock.

What DACA was is what all of this is to the Democrat Party. It was an advanced voter registration drive for Democrats masked as compassion and love for the children. And again, I’m sorry for being redundant, but you have to realize that people are tuning in by the hundreds of thousands every minute here, tuning in, tuning out.

We’re talking about this six-month period where it seemed like trainloads of unaccompanied minors from Central America were showing up, and Obama administration people were picking ’em up, not even processing ’em, just taking them and depositing them with families all over the country, I’m sure good Democrat families. It was just an advanced amnesty program and the whole point of it for Democrats is voter registration. For Republicans it’s cheap labor. For both parties it’s keeping donors happy.

Now, it’s interesting to look at the history of this from the House side. Reuters had a story back on September 1st. “House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan urged President Donald Trump on Friday not to rescind DACA.” More Republicans lined up against the move. Ryan and Senator Orrin Hatch Friday joined a small but growing group of lawmakers from the party that controls Congress and the White House to speak out against killing DACA, created in 2012 by Democrat former President Barack Hussein O.

Now, if Ryan and company love it so much, why didn’t they pass it back in 2012? And the reason they didn’t is because they wanted to get reelected. They knew their base steadfastly opposed this. In fact, back in 2012, Ryan and company were screaming about Obama’s illegal action from the rooftops. Ryan said, “I don’t think he should do that,” meaning Obama. “I believe this is something Congress has to fix.” Well, it’s been thrown to Congress to fix it, and they don’t want any part of it now.

Here is another story from The Daily Caller. “Paul Ryan In 2014: Executive Amnesty Is ‘Blatantly Unconstitutional,'” but now he doesn’t think Trump should get rid of it. Three years ago Obama was blatantly unconstitutional, but now that it’s in there, Trump should leave it alone. We don’t want to rescind this.

I’m not gonna spend all day on this, but that pretty much gets us up to speed on where this is. There’s now a six-month period of time for Congress to take this hot potato and do something with it legislatively and either create a new law that does something everybody can agree with, with the DREAMers or not. And they don’t want to touch it. This is what’s kind of not funny, but it is in a way.

Bobby in Shreveport, Louisiana, you’re next. It’s great to have you. How are you doing, sir?

CALLER: I’m good. How are you?

RUSH: Very well. Very, very well.

CALLER: Rush, on the idea of giving amnesty to these DREAMers in order to get a wall, it struck me that we just won the election on building a wall. Why would we offer a bargaining chip of amnesty when we hold the cards? I mean, the liberals should be begging us for mercy, not the other way around. I know Paul Ryan’s afraid of Hispanics or whatever, but a lot of these people are never gonna vote for Republicans because they’ve had it beaten into them by the media that we’re anti-Hispanic, this and that. You know, these might just be children, but they’re gonna have children too and they’re gonna be competing against our children in the future for jobs and scholarships and whatever. So this is exactly not what America is all about. This is not what we voted for.

RUSH: No, no, no. I understand that. My idea back in February was — February, things were blowing up at Trump, and the lines of opposition were forming, and the bobbleheads of opposition were popping up; they were everywhere. But the kids were here. It no longer was a theoretical argument. The DREAMers were here, and they are young children. I could not envision them being rounded up and sent back home. I couldn’t see that happening. I couldn’t see the United States doing that. I certainly couldn’t see Trump doing it.

So I was thinking, okay, since Obama got this one, he did this with an extraconstitutional executive action, there’s got to be a price for that. That was the sole basis for my compromise. I was not trying to say that this depends on the wall being built. I was trying to propose it as a negotiating point for Trump, as an idea. He’s the guy with The Art of the Deal. He’s the guy that can take bullet points and make them into a vast negotiation presentation to dazzle and wow everybody.

There was opposition to the wall, as you and I knew there was gonna be, and Trump knew there was gonna be. But I understand you won the election and you think the wall should be built anyway, regardless what happens with the DREAMers. And I agree with that. But remember here, Trump’s biggest opposition here in Washington is not the Democrats. I know that they’ve got eight votes in the Senate that basically control the Senate. But Trump’s big problem or obstacle is his own party. And we’ve been through that every which way but Sunday. And you can see it here in the contradictions.

Back in 2014 when Obama did this, the Republicans in leadership screaming, “You can’t do it, it’s unconstitutional, we don’t want any part of it, you can’t do that,” because they had to get reelected. Now that it’s the law of the land, they don’t want to get rid of it. Which means they don’t want to do any heavy lifting, which means they didn’t expect to be in this position, meaning winning the presidency. They didn’t expect their party to be running Washington. I don’t offer that as an excuse.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I got an email note: “Rush, don’t you know, it’s discriminatory and racist, it’s white supremacist to expect immigrants to pass a citizenship test? If you are going to demand that young immigrants know the history of this country, don’t you realize that you are teaching racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and Nazism.”

And I had to stop, that’s exactly right. Well, I mean it’s what the left says. That’s how the left is categorizing America. That’s why we can’t teach citizenship because there’s nothing worthwhile about this nation’s history that’s worth being taught. We want them to become citizens so they can vote Democrat. No, no. This is the point of the Antifa bunch.

(laughing) Anyway, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh here. “Harvard President Slams ‘Cruel’ Donald Trump for Ending DACA — Outgoing Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust –” Do you know what the Harvard Endowment is? The Harvard endowment is $32 billion. They ought to be giving away tuition to half the students every year. Thirty-two billion and they’re still begging for donations.

Anyway, the outgoing Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust is a Civil War historian, and you know what that makes him. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Oh, yeah, hates Robert E. Lee, hates the stars and bars, hates the South, it’s obvious. It’s a must. I mean, that’s a requirement if you’re gonna be a Civil War historian at Harvard.

Anyway, he has “denounced President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on Tuesday, and vowed to lobby for DACA to continue. ‘This cruel policy recognizes neither justice nor mercy,’ Faust wrote in an e-mail to the Harvard Crimson.” So the college president’s writing in the student newspaper. “In the months to come, we will make every effort to have our voice heard, in the halls of Congress and elsewhere, about the need for the protections of DACA to continue.”

Now, according to the Harvard Crimson, “roughly 65 Harvard students are DACA beneficiaries, meaning they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and do not have legal residency in the United States. They were admitted to Harvard ahead of U.S. citizens, legal immigrants and eligible international students who might otherwise have qualified for a place at Harvard,” but 65 places have been taken by DACA students.

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RUSH: We’re going to San Angelo, Texas. You know what I love about San Angelo? You gotta be going there to get there. You will not accidentally run into San Angelo. The Houston Oilers used to have training camp there now and then. This is Linda, and it’s great to have you. How you doing, Linda?

CALLER: Thank you. I’m fine. I’m a faithful listener, and I rely on you, Rush, to separate fact from fiction.

RUSH: I appreciate that and I love the fact that you’re from Texas.

CALLER: That’s right, I’m from Texas. It’s my understanding that there’s two groups of people that fall under DACA. You have the original DREAMers that were here prior to Obama bringing in the young people from primarily Central American countries.

RUSH: Right, Guatemala, El Salvador, right.

CALLER: And they’re treated very differently. The original DREAMer, what we call the original DREAMers in Texas don’t qualify for any kind of governmental support. And when they graduate from high school, they have to apply for right-to-work permits, and a lot of them are working under those permits currently. Then you have the people that Obama brought in, the young people that Obama brought in that do qualify for financial aid. So they’re treated kind of differently, and so you get mixed feelings about what to do.

RUSH: You know one of them, right?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, go ahead. I’ve got one minute. I’m trying to get you to the —

CALLER: Yes. We know a young man that was brought here at the age of 4, now 23, he graduated from high school, and he is on right-to-work permits.

RUSH: Right. And you can’t see this kid being deported. He isn’t doing anything.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: He didn’t know what happened when he got here?

CALLER: Right. So his fear is, well, if they do away with it, does that mean my right-to-work permit goes away. He doesn’t speak Spanish. He doesn’t know anyone in Mexico.

RUSH: Right. Okay. Let me deal with that we come back, because this is exactly why I proposed my compromise, ’cause of people like this. A four-year-old who is now a high school student soon to graduate, there’s no way people want to — by the way, wait ’til you hear the sound bite I have coming up. Sarah Huckabee Sanders here at the press briefing. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’m running the policy at the White House. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number one from today. I think it’s one. This is me back in February offering a solution. Here it is.

RUSH ARCHIVE: In order for the DREAMer thing to be acceptable, the rest of this stuff has to be by the book. No amnesty for anybody other than the DREAMers. We enforce existing law. We turn the Border Patrol agents loose to find people they already know exist and they already know where they are and deport them. People that have committed crimes, people that have been accused of crimes, they’re subject to deportation. People who’ve been convicted of committing crimes.

These are all people that are not citizens. They’re illegally here in the first place, and deporting them is exactly according to existing law. If that happens, and if they move on the wall, if they move on strict border control, then the DREAMer thing is a worthwhile compromise. You’re looking at me like you’re incredulous. He thinks I’ve set off an earthquake here. I don’t know what the politics are of rounding up a bunch of kids. I know. I know each of these DREAMers has two parents, and if you have 750,000 DREAMers, that’s the number —

RUSH: Okay, that’s enough. We got the point. So at the press briefing this afternoon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders got a question from Major Garrett, or Lieutenant Garrett, depending on how you see him day to day. He said, “Look, in the context of DACA as a piece of legislation, would the president be willing to sign something that only addresses that or would it also need to have components of the RAISE Act and would there maybe possibly be funding for the border wall thrown into it?”

SANDERS: The president wants to see responsible immigration reform, and he wants that to be part of it. But, again, we can’t take just a one-piece fix.

RUSH: She said Trump wants the wall to be part of it. Even with a hurricane bearing down on the EIB Network, still able to foresee future.


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