Fear Governs Both Parties on Immigration

RUSH: The immigration bill came out of the Senate judiciary committee. This thing is still not the law of the land yet, but it’s on the way. Before I give you the details of what’s in this bill, I have to share with you some of the news stories about this. “Immigrant supporters…” This is AP. “Immigrant supporters claim their first major victory since the September 11th terrorist attacks…” Now, when you hear this news today, folks, you’re going to be a little perplexed here I think as to what this issue represents to some people.

“Immigrant supporters claim their first major victory since the 9/11 terrorist attacks after a bipartisan group of senators approved legislation that would give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship. Senator John McCain said that turnout in the hundreds of thousands,” these protests out there in Los Angeles, all over the place, “helped galvanize support for the bill.'” Well, that’s a heck of a thing to admit. So if you want a bill passed all you got to do is go out and raise a — well, be peaceful.
Show up big numbers and so forth and supposedly wave the Mexican flag all over the place and the Congress will hear and you grant what you want. It’s real simple to explain what’s going on here, folks. Fear is governing both parties on this immigration business. It’s all about votes. It’s all about not alienating the coming and increasingly large Hispanic sector of the voting population. Everybody is trying — well, the Democrats are certainly trying — to cater to them, and some Republicans are. There’s actually a three-way split in the Republican Party because there are Republicans who are concerned about that, and I would put the president in that camp, by the way.
I think the president would love to lead a movement to realign the country as close to permanently as possible by creating a Republican majority that can’t be defeated after the congressional alignments would take place, and I think the Democrats know full well that what’s at stake for them is to create another minority bloc like the black vote in this country. If they can get the Hispanic vote, that will guarantee them a certain amount of support. Then the other two factions on the Republican side are the business community, who likes the cheap labor (“Well, only doing jobs the American people won’t do.”) and then there’s the segment of the Republican Party that’s listening to its grassroots base and is simply worried about the border not being secured, and we have a security problem, and nobody paying attention to the law.
In fact, lawbreakers are being rewarded. So you’ve got the legal and moral; you have the security side; then you’ve got the future votes side, and you’ve got the business side. It’s all tied in together. There are all these different factions, and when you’re dealing with politicians, and what do they need to succeed? Votes! That’s going to be the #1 guiding thing, I think, at least for the Democrats and quite a few Republicans — and I think that’s how you explain McCain’s statement that, “Well, yeah, all those protests, why, that galvanized support here for the bill.”

This is the French News Agency. They got their own problems with protests. They’re turning violent over there. These people, they’re protesting work, right? Essentially. Right. Yeah, you can now fire a 26-year-old over there without cause. In France you’re never supposed to get fired. They’ve signed up for that a long time. You’re never supposed to get fired. Now they’re laying down. It’s turning violent in a lot of ways. More on that coming up. The French News Agency, the headline: “Today We March; Tomorrow We Vote — Fearful US Latinos flex political muscle. The explosion of protests against tough US immigration reforms marks an unprecedented flexing of Hispanic political muscle that’s left the Washington administration scrambling to react.
“‘Today we March; tomorrow we vote,’ was the warning chanted by many of the 500,000 protesters who brought…” Protesters? They’re illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are threatening us! Today we March; tomorrow we vote! “…fears over what they see as a racist assault on their community, the US Hispanic community spurred in confidence by the sheer numbers of their growing ranks across the US has hit the streets with a peaceful force rarely seen since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. ‘In the last few days we’ve seen a landmark show of numbers by the Hispanic community,’ said Louis Desipio a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine.
“‘It’s fear. It’s anger and frustration motivating this,’ he said of the 32.4 million strong US Latino community who make up more than 12% of the US population. Here’s some highlights of the bill, Senate judiciary committee bill. It allows illegal immigrants who were in the United States before 2004 to continue working illegally for six years if they pay a $1,000 fine and clear a criminal background check. They would become eligible for permanent residents upon paying another $1,000 fine, any back taxes, and after having learned English.” Okay, now, that adds up to amnesty. McCain, you’ll hear later, was on Good Morning America today.
Surprisingly — wait ’til you hear this — Charlie Gibson finally treated McCain like every other Republican gets treated when they go on television in the mainstream drive-by media. His answers were challenged, not accepted! Gibson argued with him about his bill being amnesty, whereas McCain said it wasn’t. It’s a little taste, Senator McCain, for what’s ahead of him as the presidential season unfolds. So they have to learn English. They have to pay $2,000 in fines. I don’t want to be cynical about this. We do this every 20 years, as I mentioned, and nothing ever changes. Another couple highlights:
“Allows illegal immigrant students with high school diplomas or GED equivalent, no criminal record and to meet other criteria to enroll in college or university or enlist in the university. Permits state schools to charge such students in-state tuition, allows illegal immigrant students with high school diplomas to go to college and in-state tuition. New immigrants would have to have temporary work visas. They also could earn legal permanent residents after six years. It adds up to 14,000 new Border Patrol agents by 2011 to the current force of 11,300. Authorizes a virtual wall of unmanned vehicles, cameras, and sensors to monitor the US-Mexico border…” What’s wrong with a real wall? “…created a special guest worker program for an estimated one and a half million immigrant farm workers, who can also earn legal permanent residency and allows illegal students with high school GED to pay in-state tuition.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, folks, let me ask you a question. Have you been watching any news coverage on the drive-by media of the whole immigration business of the vote last night in the Senate judiciary committee, their bill? In any story, do you not get the impression that the vast majority of people of this country are all for this bill, all for the amnesty program, whatever you want to call it? I do. Well, imagine my surprise ladies and gentlemen when I awoke today and started doing show prep! I do this exhaustively each day. It’s an Associated Press story about an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

‘Most people in the US think illegal immigration is a serious problem. A solid majority oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become legal workers or citizens.’ Here are some findings: ‘Some 59% say they oppose allowing illegal immigrants to apply for legal temporary worker status. More than six in ten, 62%, say that they oppose making it easier for illegal immigrants to become citizens, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, nine in ten in that poll say they consider immigration to be a serious problem, with 57% of those polled saying it’s really, really serious.’

Now, if you look at this and then you examine what members of Congress are doing with their votes, and you compare the way the port deal went, compared to the way this is going, you see an obvious difference, and I’m telling you, it’s all rooted in fear. They just are afraid of anger the Latino vote and community, and the Democrats are playing this up. The Democrats are playing this up. They see a winner here by portraying the Republicans as cold-hearted, mean-spirited extremists, racist, bigot, sexist homophobes, and Democrats are doing their best to stay unified on this and actually stay out of it in a controversial way.

This is another AP story, from Mexico City: ‘Mexicans cheered the proposal approved Monday by the Senate judiciary committee to legalize undocumented migrants,’ man, they keep changing the term here, ‘and provide temporary work visas and credited huge marches of migrants across the United States as the decisive factor behind the vote. Mexican president Vicente Fox said the vote was the result of five years of work dating to the start of his presidential term in 2000.’ (laughing.) Vicente Fox is on record saying it’s exactly what we’ve been looking for, to force the United States to legalize their illegals. But get this…

‘Reporter Alberto Tinoco said on the Televisa television network Nightly News broadcast last night, ‘With all due respect to Uncle Sam this shows that Los Angeles has never stopped being ours.” (Laughing.) You heard right. (Mocking laughter.) You heard right. He was referring to a Saturday March in Los Angeles that drew an estimated 500,000 mainly Mexican — and, by the way, I told you people yesterday, this wasn’t spontaneous. They try to portray this as something spontaneous. We now know that it was planned and coordinated and urged by Spanish-language radio disc jockeys in Los Angeles. In one sense you could look at that and say, ‘Look at the power of radio,’ but still, it was well organized, and well managed. It didn’t just happen spontaneously, as I suspected and as I thought. All right. You gotta hear this. Dianne Feinstein. This is at the hearing yesterday, just quick little sentence here, about eight seconds, her description of illegal aliens.

DIFI: They pay taxes. Their children are Americans. They go to schools. They’re good citizens, and they’re needed.

RUSH: So (sigh). They’re ‘good citizens.’ She just bestowed upon them citizenship, which I think a lot of people don’t take seriously enough anymore because you’re born with it naturally in this country, but I tell you, this is how muddied the whole thing has gotten when you can refer to illegal immigrants as some of the finest citizens. By the way, I’m not commenting on their character, and I don’t want anybody to infer here that I’m belittling their character or anything. To me the word ‘illegal’ there is the big bugaboo for me, because there are people going through the system as required by law, and some of them are not getting in, and we just made it possible here, if you want to game the system, that’s the way to do it — and in the process of gaming the system, we are going to praise you to the hilt. Democratic senators will call you great citizens, ‘backbone of America,’ can’t get done what we need to get done without you.

This is pandering of the worst sort, and it’s pandering for votes.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: ‘Tougher Enforcement May Jeopardize Support; GOP, Democrats, Both Stand to Lose.’ All right. So there’s Senator McCain out there (summarized): ‘We’ve really toughened it up. This isn’t an amnesty bill. They’ve gotta take a lot of steps here to pass our test and stay. They’ve got to go to English class. They’ve got to learn English, got to pay $2,000 in fines, they’ve got to do, you know, all these other things.’ What if they refuse? One of the things that worries me about this is, if you look at what’s happened in France with the militant Islamists that have immigrated there, they’ve basically popped up and taken over various neighborhoods outside Paris, and they’ve created their own enclaves and their own laws, and they’re called ‘no-go zones’ meaning the cops don’t even go there.

Cops do not go there because everybody’s afraid of irritating them and making them mad, so basically they’ve migrated, immigrated to France, but they’re not acculturating or assimilating — and a lot of people have the same fears here with not all of these people, of course, but it doesn’t take all of them. If there’s going to political fear of enforcing any of these new whatever-you-want-to-call-them, ‘provisions’ in the bill, if they refuse, if we have not expressed a willingness to deport illegals now, what makes anybody think we’re going to start when they refuse — if they refuse, if some of them refuse — any of these provisions?

This business about learning English, I think that’s going to end up being the flash point of this, because there are those that come that don’t want to learn English that refuse to, and in fact demand that everything be available in Spanish or in their native tongue. If they refuse to go to English school and learn the language, what are we going to do? Well, this story makes it plain: nothing! Because all that will happen is, ‘We may jeopardize political support if we try to enforce these provisions!’

‘Both Republicans and Democrats risk alienating coveted supporters.’

What about the poll I just read you that the vast majority of people in this country don’t like this, think it’s a major problem? Those people, the vast majority of the people in this country, are being totally ignored in this, and the support that’s coveted is the illegals, and it’s all because of this giant voting bloc of Hispanics and the assumption that they will all be monolithic and all end up voting one way and both parties are going to try to secure the total support of this new bloc — and in the process can’t do anything that would be offensive, can’t do anything that would hurt their feelings, can’t do anything to even be critical.

So the majority of people at least expressed — and it was two different polls; one was Quinnipiac and one was NBC/Wall Street Journal. Those thoughts, those opinions are being ignored and instead the illegals now are being coveted. There’s another little paragraph in the second page of this Washington Post story: ‘At the same time, however, lawmakers face the potential ire of voters who want more done to crack down on the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants now in the country. The problem led Democratic governors in both Arizona and New Mexico to declare states of emergency in counties along the border with Mexico to combat illegal immigration.

‘Talking points circulating among Democrats on Capitol Hill stressed the following: ‘If you do not seem credible on enforcement you may lose credibility which will jeopardize other components of immigration reform.” So the Democrats have sent talking points: Look, you’ve got to seem credible on enforcement. That doesn’t mean you have to do anything about it. You just have to ‘seem’ credible. Just like the ports deal. You gotta act like you are not going to allow this to happen, but then you don’t do anything about it.

Well, the ports deal they did something about it, but in this case they’re just telling you they are. The talking points advise Democrats on the right attitude to cop. Not the right policy to have, but the right attitude to cop — and so it’s a balancing act. The Democrats: ‘We’ve got to seem like we’re really tough on enforcing. We’ve got to be credible on that, otherwise we may lose credibility, which will jeopardize other components of immigration reform.’ So this is why I have my sincere doubts that these provisions here are going to be enforced and followed by all that many people.

There’s no reason for them to. They’re being courted. They’re being wined and dined. They’re being referred to here as ‘coveted.’ In the meantime, they’re talking about how this proves Los Angeles ‘has always been ours.’ This television news guy from Mexico City last night said that. Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post today: ‘Decency to ‘Those People’ — Half a million people poured into the streets of LA on Saturday to protest the various Republican-sponsored proposals in Congress that would demonize illegal immigrants.’ (Laughing.)

You see how this is working out politically? ‘…that would demonize illegal immigrants. Hundreds marched yesterday in Detroit,’ which last I checked is nowhere near the Mexican border. ‘Tens of thousands have demonstrated in Phoenix and Denver and other cities across the country. In every case, the crowds were mostly Latino. We know that Latinos are the nation’s largest minority and that most of the people in those demonstrations were either born in the US or here legally.’

We do? We ‘know’ that? We’re assuming that! Eugene is assuming that. We don’t know that. ‘But we also know that at least some of those protesters had gone through the experience of crossing the border illegally under the tutelage of avaricious people smugglers known as coyotes. At least some had been here for months or years working to send money home to their familias. Keeping their heads down, somehow managing to carve out lives for themselves and their children.’

Yeah. ‘Somehow managing,’ in America, to carve out a life. It’s tough out there, but they somehow managed.

‘Who are they? Well, after the demonstrations were over, where did they go? Are they so diabolically clever at hiding in plain site, or is it that the rest of us refuse to see them because by seeing them we would have to acknowledge their humanity?’ And it continues: We must be decent, understand that these are human beings. So this is just a little flavor, a little taste for what’s going on out there. The last paragraph of this story: ‘Whatever Congress does, 12 million people aren’t going to pack up and go home overnight. They’re here, and their names are Juan and Maria. They are not ‘those people.’ We see them every day. Let’s deal with them as fellow human beings.’

Oh! Be still, my beating heart. I’m on the verge of tears.

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