RUSH: Now, some of you people doubt me. After 19 years, I literally don’t understand why. Don’t doubt me on these things, but some of you still doubt me, I’m checking the e-mail. ‘Rush, you keep saying the Democrats want poor, stupid people as new voters, as new residents, they don’t even care if they’re citizens, just want them here as residents. That just seems a little accusatory to me.’ All right. Yesterday, let’s go back. We had Kim Gandy, the president of the NAGs, writing a story essentially — I’m not making this up. I hope you were here yesterday to listen to this. Kim Gandy wrote a piece about all the spousal abuse that goes on among legal and illegal immigrants. It was a piece about how the women, female immigrants, get beat up constantly, they can’t go work, their husbands threaten to throw ’em out of the house, all kinds of crazy things. And, of course, I and others like me are responsible for this, for creating this air of negativity about immigrants, legal and illegal. It was absurd, and it was funny, but it was quite telling. The conclusion I came to was that these are the kind of people she wanted in the country. It was beyond description.
So here’s Barbara Ehrenreich, ‘Rush Limbaugh has been expecting liberals to start ‘whining’ about the $5000 fine undocumented immigrants will have to pay to gain citizenship under the new immigration bill.’ Well, I did say that, but I went further. I said there will not be a fine because most of these people are not going to try to become citizens and they won’t have to, therefore, pay a fine. They won’t have to go to the end of the line and they won’t have to go back to their home countries and come back because the minute the bill is signed they’re legal. They don’t have to leave. It’s only if they try to become citizens and have to pay the fine. And that isn’t going to happen. Most of them are not going to pursue citizenship because that’s not why they’re here in the first place. The second thing that will happen is, the whining will begin, ‘5,000 is too punitive, why, we’re taking food out of the mouths of babies. Why, we’ve got to lower that or maybe waive it or make the employer pay it or some such thing.’ So she’s acknowledging I got that right. Then she continues.
‘Most liberals have been too busy chortling about the immigration-induced split in the GOP to make their own case against the bill. So let a mighty whine rise over the land: Undocumented workers shouldn’t be fined; they should get a hefty bonus! All right, they committed a ‘crime’ — the international equivalent of breaking and entry. But breaking and entry is usually a prelude to a much worse crime, like robbery or rape. What have the immigrants been doing once they get into the US? Taking up time on the elliptical trainers in our health clubs? Getting ahead of us on the wait-lists for elite private nursery schools?’ No, Barbara, they have been winding their way into our health care system. They’ve been finding their way into all areas of our social safety net, referred to on this program as the hammock. And they are a net expense. So the breaking and entering does, in a way, lead to a much worse crime. But the problem is it’s not viewed as a crime by the Democrats because they want the redistribution of wealth. They love the fact that there will be a net cost and a net cost increase, things Social Security and health care, food stamps and all that because that’s how their power is enriched and entrenched. Now, here’s liberal woman who’s concerned about the poor, she wants them to get a bonus, not a fine.
‘In case you don’t know what immigrants do in this country, the Latinos have a word for it–trabajo. They’ve been mowing the lawns, cleaning the offices, hammering the nails and picking the tomatoes, not to mention all that dish-washing, diaper-changing, meat-packing and poultry-plucking. The punitive rage directed at illegal immigrants grows out of a larger blindness to the manual labor that makes our lives possible: The touching belief, in the class occupied by Rush Limbaugh among many others, that offices clean themselves at night and salad greens spring straight from the soil onto one’s plate. Native-born workers share in this invisibility, but it’s far worse in the case of immigrant workers, who are often, for all practical purposes, nameless.’ So she’s writing here that because of the class I occupy, I have no clue how these menial jobs get done. Uh, Ms. Ehrenreich, I pay to get them done. I employ a lot of people. I pay them to do the work, and they are paid well. The idea here that there’s a class of people that don’t have any clue how all this stuff gets done. The critics of us, our critics, have no understanding. This is not anti-Hispanic. It’s not about the nature of these people, other than the fact that we wish we’d increase the immigration of educated and highly skilled people.
Most of the people on my side of this are concerned about the future of the country, demographically, electorally, culturally, institutions and traditions that made the country great. If there were evidence that these people were wanting to assimilate and become part of that, it would be a different story, but the evidence is to the contrary. She then continues with this. ‘The only question is how much we owe our undocumented immigrant workers. First, those who do not remain to enjoy the benefits of old age in America will have to be reimbursed for their contributions to Medicare and Social Security.’ I’m not making it up. Not making it up. These poor illegals who don’t stay here to enjoy the benefits of old age in America, they’re going to have to be reimbursed when they go home because they’re not going to get their Social Security and Medicare. Not going to stay here long enough. No, it’s not a parody. ‘Undocumented immigrants annually pay an estimated $7 billion more than they take out into Social Security, and $1.5 billion more into Medicare… A study by the National Academy of Sciences.’ Well, I’ve got my own study, Ms. Ehrenreich, and it’s Bob Rector at the Heritage Foundation. I trust this guy. He’s a scholar, he’s an expert on these kind of things, transfer payments, balances, net costs on the poor, not just in this country, but around the world. But her whole point of this column is we owe these people so much more than what we’re paying them now. They need a bonus for coming in here; they’re doing things we won’t do; they’re not staying long enough to collect the benefits that they’re owed because they’re paying into. Has she never heard of Prop 187? So anyway, the opinions on all this cross the spectrum.