RUSH: Dalton, Georgia. Scott. I’m glad you waited sir. Welcome to the show.
CALLER: Thank you. It is a pleasure speaking with you.
RUSH: I can imagine. Thank you.
CALLER: Yeah, it is. The point that I have to make here is I am a dyed in the wool conservative Republican and thoroughly disagree with your assessment of the immigration issue.
RUSH: How is that possible? How can you thoroughly disagree? What I have said about this is as reasoned and right as it possibly could be. What is your area of disagreement?
CALLER: Well, I think there is some variance on what you said before about being pro-business, about being encouraging, free market system and what we are talking about is intrusion of the government into businesses. It is intrusion into personal lives and I think the rule of law is extremely important, however, this is a misdemeanor that we are talking, just like a traffic ticket. Fines should be there.
RUSH: Whoa, whoa. What’s a misdemeanor? Being in the country illegally and working?
CALLER: Being in the country without — or not leaving the country when you are coming illegally, is a misdemeanor.
RUSH: You know, I’ve gotten calls from — you’re obviously, are you in the Agri-business?
CALLER: Textile industry here.
RUSH: The textile industry. You have been hard hit. I understand. Hard hit by NAFTA and a bunch of other things. So I know where you are coming from. I have had calls from others like you, who are in the AG business who even here in Florida, who almost said the exact same thing to me. ‘You are a great conservative, Rush, but you are missing our point of view on this.’ I understand your point of view. I understand cheap labor. I understand it’s the greatest single cost business have and so forth. But when you start talking free market, I don’t mean to insult you by telling you this, but you really need to read Thomas Sowell’s book that I have been plugging here the past two days. It’s called ‘Basic Economics.’ It’s just simple. There is a segment of the book where he brilliantly explains how the free market in products is not analogous at all to the free market in immigration. There’s no such thing as a free market in immigration.
CALLER: In your talks over the years, I’ve been listening to you for many years. You talk about freedom around the world. And I am, I have personally known a number of people who are illegal immigrants. Legal and illegal. Let me say that clearly. I see how our government drives people into a black market economy. And there is a perfecta here that I have not heard in any of the media so far, and that is how the immigrant population legal and illegal, promotes freedom in other parts of the world without some of the military issues being required.
RUSH: What?
CALLER: Think about this for a moment. If you have 12 million, according to institute, 12 million illegals —
RUSH: More like 20. But we’ll use your number.
CALLER: Let’s say there is a large number there, they’re sending home a percentage of their wages to their country. Is that correct?
RUSH: Large percentage like $397 billion in five years.
CALLER: Well, I think Walter Williams, who has hosted your show, will agree that goes directly to the people, not to the politicians in those countries.
RUSH: Oh, man, you are really going to great lengths to justify the labor force that you want. This, this, you really, really, really are abandoning conservatism here to do this. You are taking the free market concept the exist in goods and products, tangible things, and you are trying to compare it to the movement of human beings that determine a culture, that determine a population, that determine a number of things about a nation’s identity. The two are not —
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: The fact that they are sending money home is not good for us.
CALLER: It is to the extent —
RUSH: It is not stopping them from coming here.
CALLER: We have to stop them from coming here, Rush. You have to secure the borders.
RUSH: Well, are you telling me you want that to happen? How will you get the workforce you want if we stop this? You specifically want the illegal workforce because they’re cheap.
CALLER: No, no, actually that is not true. The failure of the government to secure the border is —
RUSH: Well, it’s not going to happen. Not going to happen.
CALLER: You don’t think so?
RUSH: No. There’s no incentive to stop the inflow in this legislation. Not at all. They want the bodies because we don’t have enough taxpayers down the road to handle all of the transfer of payments we have to make to the baby boomers. That is what it is about. It isn’t even about immigration.
CALLER: You don’t think about finding a way to pull those folks in so they can legally work as guest workers and then pay the taxes and pay the fees and the fines?
RUSH: Sure, it’s about that but not immigration. They only have to pay $5,000 fine and all this and go to the end of the line and go home if they want citizenship. Not about immigration. Not about assimilation. It’s about getting the bodies in here to do work to pay taxes. To be able to pay your and my Social Security, Medicare and all the other baby boomer’s because we are living longer and we’ve had so many abortions in this country we short circuited ourselves on warm bodies. Our birth rate replacement levels are not what they should be.
CALLER: I don’t know about you. But I’m not counting on Social Security.
RUSH: Well, I’m not either. Whether we want it or not, we have to get it. We can’t turn it back. We have to accept it. We can give it away once we get it. My grandfather tried never to accept it. He didn’t need it either. The point is, we don’t have enough workers. Right now, the payment burden, it takes the Social Security taxes, the taxes period, of three employees to pay the retirement benefits, Social Security benefits of one person. If things don’t change, that burden will shift down to two. That means those two people’s taxes are going to rise in order to be able to pay. They’re not going to reform these programs because there is too much danger in that electorally. So this is a mad dash to get any warm body they can. My point is, there is no incentive to secure the border. They’re going to say there is. But there isn’t. The legislation itself is evidence of that. I mean, when you’re going to allow 400- 800,000 guest workers you’re going to immediately make, whatever, 12-20 million illegals legal. Not citizens, legal. Then you’re going to let all of them to bring in four family members. We are talking 50 million people here, if that actually happens. Without concern really who they are. Background checks, employers are going to have to do that. They won’t like that. That won’t last either.