RUSH: We’re gonna start in Chicago. This is Dan, great to have you, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s a pleasure to speak to you finally, and forgive me if I sound a little nervous. My question is on immigration. I grew up in Chicago — union contractor, union household, Democrat now converted to Republican — but I just wanted to know something. I’m really confused. When did it slip that the Democrats were so concerned about illegal aliens, illegal immigration and everything? Because we were always taught that it was the evil Republicans that wanted these illegal immigrants and illegal aliens here and they were gonna take our jobs and all this other stuff, and it’s like flip-flopped. I’m just really confused, so I don’t know if you want to comment on that.
RUSH: You want to know when this happened.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: So how many years ago was it, if you don’t mind my asking, that you were young and living in your union household and hearing that it was the Republicans that wanted all of these illegals in the country because of cheap labor?
CALLER: Well, I’m 55, and since I was a kid, you know, I heard that. But once I started getting out working, and actually when I started asking questions about certain things that didn’t make sense, I either got, “What, are you Republican now or something?” and I wouldn’t get an answer, so I guess I am.
RUSH: Okay, so it’s 30 or 35 years ago when you were aware of one thing —
CALLER: Pretty much from the eighties, you know, and then the nineties, and kind of maybe, I don’t know when —
RUSH: Well, the answer to your question, the short version answer to your question is the shift began when the Democrat Party actually changed its full-time ideological alliance. Because you’re right, it wasn’t that long ago that organized labor steadfastly opposed, unless they could organize it themselves, unless they could turn these workers into union and dues-paying union workers themselves.
I’ll tell you what happened. When the unions realized that these kinds of workers could facilitate an increase in the minimum wage, they began to soften on them, because as far as union contract negotiators were concerned, any time the minimum wage goes up, they think automatically the base union wage go up. “Oh, you’re gonna raise the wage of an incompetent idiot? Well, we are experts, experienced. We’re the experts at what we do,” bricklayers or whatever it is. “We want a commensurate raise. If you’re gonna raise these people that can’t do diddly-squat, and you’re gonna say they’re worth eight dollars an hour instead of six,” just to pick a couple numbers. Then the union negotiators would use that as a mechanism for renegotiating their deals and getting higher wages.
But what’s happened, the basic short answer to your question is, the Democrat Party has become whatever the ideology demands first, and all of the various groups that make up the Democrat Party, constituencies, have to fall in line. So in this case the Democrat Party wants voters, and the way to get voters, especially as the poor enter the middle class, become a little bit more self-reliant, this is pre-Obama economics days, people would graduate from the Democrat Party dependence and end up voting Republican, you had to replace those people.
The Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass that’s uneducated and unskilled and low paid. And they have to import them now. That’s what amnesty’s about or blanket pardons, if you prefer the term. So the unions have just had to get in line with this, because it has become the overall objective of the party. And it has been kind of interesting to watch, ’cause I think you’re right, this does not help union people. It does not help the union wage. It doesn’t help any American worker, but union labor included.
CALLER: Yeah, everyone thinks it does, but —
RUSH: How does it help the average American worker? To flood the market with low skilled, uneducated people who have nothing and therefore will work for pennies compared to you, a lifelong union member who have demands and requirements based on your expertise, your length of service, your qualifications, experience, and all of that. And what’s happening is that your expertise and experience is being judged as replaceable by low wage, unskilled people who can be taught whatever it is that needs to be done, and the cheapness of it, how little it costs, is worth it for a while.
The Democrat Party benefits because here comes a new wave of dependent people who are gonna totally depend on the Democrat Party and the government for food and water and shelter and whatever else. And the Democrats will pay the unions off in a bunch of various ways, winning elections, giving leaders various appointments, positions of power within the party. The whole thing is a rigged game.
The Republicans, on the other hand, don’t leave them out of this. The Chamber of Commerce wants the same thing. They want the cheap labor, too. You talk about it used to be when you were growing up that the Republicans — I would caution you to always remember that there were a bunch of lies about Republicans told in Democrat households, and there still are. War on Women, racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, you name it. And there were a bunch of lies being told when you were growing up, too, that the Republicans want this. The last immigration bill was a big one. Simpson-Mazzoli in 1986, and it was under three million. And we were told, if we just do it this time, we’ll never have to do it again.
Ted Kennedy and the boys promised, “Yep, we’ll secure the border. We’ll shut it down. We’ve got to take care of these three million, they’re here. We’ve gotta do something about it. It’s inhumane what we’re doing. They’re living in the shadows,” the arguments were. So Reagan went along with it, got snookered, because they didn’t do anything to secure the border. After Reagan left office, two years later, nothing was done to secure the border, and the flood continued. And we’re back at it, only this time we’re talking 20 million now, 12 to 20 million.
The first wave that Obama’s talking about is 4.5 to five million, as they say, but if they’re in the shadows, and we don’t know who they are or where they are, then how do we know how many are actually going to be pardoned? I got a note from a guy who said, “You know what? Amnesty’s good, Rush, I mean, amnesty carries a lot of weight, but we still have a lot of low-information people who may not be totally up to speed. What about characterizing what Obama’s gonna do as a blanket pardon, rather than amnesty?”
I mean, there’s gun amnesty. Amnesty can be a good thing. You turn in your gun, no penalty attached to whatever you’ve done with it or possessed it illegally. Temporary amnesty plans here if they want to effect some kind of change, but blanket pardon, only criminals get pardons. But sometimes even good people get amnesty. So I don’t know. It’s interesting the power of words and various terminologies in order to convey them. But on this one, I don’t think there’s really a problem. The vast majority of the people do not want any of it.
They don’t want amnesty or blanket pardon, and they don’t want Obamacare, and there never has been majority support for it. All of this is happening against the will of the American people. That’s why the election happened. The election, people were sent to Washington to stop this. Don’t get me started on this again. I’m gonna say something I’ll regret about the Republicans and what do they not see. It’s a good thing that ear-splitting tone just went off here.
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