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May 18, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
May 18, 2006, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hell, well, well, well, lots going on today, folks, and some of it is extremely, very interesting.
I'm looking forward to the next three hours.
Glad to have you with us.
It's a sheer pleasure and delight to be able to talk about the things that matter to all of us and our future with you every day.
So I've got three hours straight ahead of it here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I am America's anchorman, America's truth detector, and a taker of huge hits.
But folks, when they start throwing rocks at me, it means that we are winning.
This is a good day.
Greetings, 800-282-2882 is the phone number.
If you would like to be on the program, the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
They've got Hayden doing pretty well here with the hearings.
Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the committee where the hearings are being conducted today, just slamming the Democrats, begging them to run on their position on the National Security Agency foreign surveillance program.
Carl Levin from Michigan is actually quoting from this discredited USA Today story.
It's stunning.
We have examples.
We have audio soundbites.
The big news, of course, ladies and gentlemen, continues to be the battle being waged in the Senate over illegal immigration.
Major, major, major progress, heeding conservative demands to shore up the southern U.S. border to prevent illegal immigrants from freely crossing into the country.
The Senate voted yesterday.
We got the news of this right at the end of yesterday's program.
As soon as the program was over, I saw the story.
Going to build a 370-mile fence, trip-layered, triple-layered.
The vote was 83 to 16, including the votes of Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Rodom.
They voted.
They were among the 83 to add the fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southern border.
Construction of the barrier would send a signal that open border days are over.
Good fences make good neighbors.
Fences don't make bad neighbors, said Senator Jeff Sessions.
Dick Durbin said a lot of stupid things.
Among them, well, what we have here has become a symbol for the right wing in American politics.
Our relationship with Mexico would come down to a barrier between our two countries.
So we have other comments from Durbin as well.
Now, the story also has this little paragraph.
Earlier in the day, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment that says legal or illegal immigrants who are convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors unrelated to their residency status will be deported immediately.
Those convicted will be permanently barred from the guest worker program or any chance of getting on a path to U.S. citizenship.
Now, what is this?
We need an amendment requiring the deportation of alien felons.
Rush, why aren't you willing to take what you can get here?
I mean, good news on the fence.
Folks, you know, we're moving the chains here.
The ground is being covered at a rapid pace.
Still a long way to go on this.
But, I mean, this is patently absurd.
Isn't that already a law for crying out loud?
How many times are we going to rewrite laws?
How many redundant laws are we going to have in this country?
It's amazing.
I guess we have to write new laws because we don't much mind people violating current laws.
What's going to happen when they just ignore all the new ones?
You know, without some serious enforcement mechanisms in here, there's no reason for anybody to obey the law.
Question is, could, could we deport rogue senators if, if they happen to get in some never mind, I don't even, I don't even want to go there um, they'll be able to get back in and haunt us, jump the fence or or what have you?
Now a couple things here to illustrate the point uh, that we are in the process of moving the chains and winning.
There are two interesting columns today, David Brooks in the NEW YORK Times, a man whose work I have often cited and praised I don't think i've ever been critical of mr Brooks and also a piece, uh by the Creators Syndicate, Alan Reynolds, who a man I also respect.
His uh, his work, particularly in economics, has been uh, highly instructive for me, uh.
But these two pieces put together, I want to analyze them for you, pieces found on TOWN HALL.
Let me start with Alan Reynolds first.
He says i'm not a big talk show fan, but I happened to catch Rush Limbaugh interviewing vice president Cheney about the recent presidential address on immigration.
Now, what you know, i'm not a big talk show fan.
Throw that in there for well, because you can't have people thinking that these people inside the Beltway and part of the GOP elite actually listen to talk Radio.
It had to be an accident.
Limbaugh's key statement or question to Dick Cheney.
Was this the compromise bill?
We're being told, is Hegel Martinez, two Republicans proposing this bill, Robert Rector at Heritage and senator Sessions, who I know you respect, mr vice president?
Both did joint analyses of this bill and what they project, using conservative estimates is, anywhere from over the next 20 years, 110 million to 217 million legal immigrants entering the country and illegals as part of that number being granted legal status.
What is the public policy, mr?
Uh, vice president, what's the public policy purpose for doing that in these kinds of numbers?
Uh, mr Reynolds then writes, vice president Cheney appeared unaware of these quote conservative estimates, unquote.
So he asked, these are people who would attain legal status?
Rush answered, no, this is a combination of both.
This is an increase in the number of legal immigrants as well, as added to illegals who would then be made legal over that 20-year time frame.
It also allows for exponential growth because these people would be allowed to bring in their family members as well.
Mr Reynolds then says, Rush is a very smart fellow and his comments on economic issues normally range from astute to brilliant.
But these numbers are not just striking, as he said, they are patently absurd, the 117, to excuse me, 217 million over the next 20 years is.
His numbers are just patently absurd.
Regardless whether the bill in question is better or worse than other immigration bills, to suggest that it would, could or even might permit legal immigration to average between 5 million and 10.9 million per year is nothing more than a cheap parlor trick.
All right, now those three paragraphs, and then they're standalone.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time uh, analyzing them, but but uh, you know very, very smart fellow comments on economic issues normally range from astute to brilliant, but the fact that I bought into these numbers, you gotta gotta question my sanity now, or my or my intelligence, because this just is not possible.
Mr Reynolds then says, the larger estimate of 217 million legal immigrants by 2026 implies that annual legal immigration under this bill would be almost 12 times larger than its current rate of about 950,000 a year, plus at least 400,000 illegal immigrants.
He says that nobody could possibly believe legal immigration is suddenly going to jump from about a million a year to nearly 11 million.
So the 20-year average of 10.9 legal immigrants per year necessarily requires annual immigration much larger than 10.9 million in the future, larger, in fact, than 25 million a year.
If the idea of Congress allowing 25 million legal immigrants per year is starting to sound unbelievable, it's because it is.
The trick involved is aptly called the magic of compound interest.
The original version of this bill would have allowed the number of temporary guest workers initially set at 325,000 to increase by as much as 20% in any given year, but that was a ceiling, not a norm.
Congress could also reduce the number.
The bill's sponsors have, in fact, reduced the proposed number of temporary six-year worker visas to 200,000.
When people talk about illegal workers moving to the back of the line, that would be the length of the line, which is currently almost non-existent.
Now, a couple of points on this.
Mr. Reynolds is striking here at the high side estimate, the 117 to 217 million illegal immigrants, and ignoring completely the lowside or even conservative estimate of between 80 and 90 million under the original bill.
Now, I don't know how many of you have been involved in negotiations, but the idea that you might suggest in a bill that the and by the way, these numbers were not specified, they had to be analyzed.
If this bill were enacted, signed into law, and every provision of it carried out, that is what would happen.
Not to say it was the design.
Of course, the people that wrote the bill knew it was going to be analyzed this way.
And you have a number like 217.
Well, that's so absurd.
So you reduce it.
Okay, fine.
As Sessions got them to do a couple days ago, and now the range is 60 to 90 million.
Well, that's still an incredibly high figure, and yet it's being portrayed as a victory.
It's a typical negotiation.
Ploy, everybody has throwaways in them.
So the magic, as Mr. Reynolds puts it, isn't compound interest.
It's extended family.
The bill not only hugely increased legal immigration, but it expanded the number and kinds of family members who would qualify for legal status as well.
Now, I would imagine, folks, that back in 1986, the last time we did this, when less than 3 million illegal immigrants were granted amnesty, it would have been unbelievable to think that at least four times as many illegal aliens would come to the country in 20 years, but that's exactly what happened.
You know, we legalized a little over 3 million in 1986.
It was granted them amnesties.
It's all right, fine.
Well, we're going to fix the problem.
Now the number is up to 12.
Some people say 20 million.
It can't happen.
It did.
It did happen.
That's precisely what happened, not to mention the millions more legal immigrants who've also immigrated here.
Now, that takes me to Mr. Reynolds' other point, which has nothing to do with analyzing the economic or demographic consequences of this bill.
He asserts in this piece that Congress wouldn't allow such growth in immigration.
Well, I'm sorry.
The evidence is otherwise.
The last 20 years.
Why do you think we're at this point now?
It's because what's happened the last 20 years, who's to say it can't happen again?
It's easier to believe that something has happened can happen again, isn't it?
Congress just voted to reduce the cap on legal immigrants.
That's true.
So now the estimate appears to be anywhere from 60 to 90 million over 20 years.
Fine.
Okay, that was a big victory down from 217 to 90.
We can all breathe easier.
But successive Congresses and presidents have, in fact, done little to stem the tide of legal and illegal immigration into the country for decades, which is why we are where we are today.
The historical evidence proves Mr. Reynolds wrong.
What has happened could very easily happen again.
And if it's in the bill, and if it thus is possible, it still is worthy of calling attention to it.
By assuming that, now this is Mr. Reynolds again, by assuming or pretending Congress would always permit the number of guest workers to increase by the maximum allowable percentage year after year without end, the original 325,000 per year would approach 1.7 million a year within a decade and 10.4 million a year by 2026.
Why stop there?
If this calculation made any sense, the U.S. would supposedly be importing 54.5 million guest workers in the year 2036 and 65.5 million in the following year and 78.6 million the year after that.
Each time 20% is added becomes part of the base, so the next time the 20% is applied to a larger amount.
Again, this is deft, but it's silly.
The only reason that 20-year analyses of this bill are being done is because about every 20 years, Congress and the president seem to act on this issue.
It takes 20 years for it to effervesce up, to bubble up to where people get roiled about it.
So that's why a 20-year analysis was not a figure picked out of the air, and it was not a figure used to create panic.
It was a figure that is historically accurate.
Every 20 years, we do something about this.
Mr. Reynolds says that we wouldn't welcome millions of spouses and children and parents into our country, but that's exactly what the bill would do as it's written.
Why deny it?
It's in plain English.
I mean, if they're going to write, what sense is it in writing a new law, a new bill?
It's, I bet it'll never happen.
Well, it can if it's written that way.
And so the warning bells were simply sounded.
And guess what?
It worked.
The 217 is now down to between 60 and 90 million.
And of course, there's nothing that says that future presidents and Congresses can't go back and change this however way they want to or ignore it or what have you.
But I suspect, folks, that, well, I don't want to speculate too much on this, but this seems the manner in which the piece opens and the substance of the piece.
I'm not sure that somebody didn't ask Mr. Reynolds to write this in order to counter these numbers out there, especially since the vice president was involved and didn't know of these numbers.
I'm a little long in this segment, so let me take a break.
We'll come back and discuss David Brooks and his piece in the New York Times right after this.
Stay with us.
America's anchorman, Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
My friends, we are winning.
I want to add one more thing to Alan Reynolds' piece from which I just quoted.
Once a law like this is passed, and you know this to be true, those of you who follow these kinds of things, legal rights will inure to those who benefit from it.
And that always ends up being litigated.
Furthermore, the political and demographic situation changes drastically, making reversing course almost impossible, which is what we're experiencing right now with all this silliness.
The reason that we're having a national argument about this is because we fixed this in 86, but we didn't fix it.
And now we've gotten to a point where they say there's nothing we can do.
Well, we don't want to go through this again.
Nothing we can do.
It's exactly right.
Once you get to a point where the problem's too big to solve, it's in a way synonymous with Senator Moynihan defining deviancy down.
Once you decide you can't stop certain kinds of crime, you just stop and just say, well, it's normal behavior now.
Well, we've got 11 to 12 million.
We can't rush the horses are out of the barn.
We can't deport these people.
We've got to find a way to make them legal and well, we don't want this to happen again.
If we're going to fix it, we're going to fix it.
And when you get a bill like this that has this wide open possibility for these massive numbers, you have to deal with it as it's written.
Nobody knows.
I'm trying to determine the intent of Congress.
The intent of Congress is what's in the stupid bill.
Well, it's absurd to think those numbers would ever be written.
Well, then why were they put in there?
On this program, we don't try to read the minds of these people.
We deal with what they actually say and do.
Learned you can't read minds a long time ago in a number of different ways.
The Reynolds piece sort of is emotional, but it's not very analytical.
It's not up to his usual stuff.
Remember, he's a brilliant economist.
He's got a tremendous pedigree and resume.
But it's one of the reasons why I'm not sure this whole thing was his idea.
I could be dead wrong about that.
But nevertheless, that's neither here nor there.
What do you mean?
I'm not going to say who I think put him.
I'm not going to start throwing accusations around.
I'm going to keep some things to myself, Snerdley.
Well, that's the interesting thing.
Snerdley says, why not?
They accuse you of things.
That's what's interesting about this.
I've not attacked Alan Reynolds ever, and I certainly haven't attacked Brooks.
And yet, today, this week, see, these things don't happen by accident.
All of a sudden, I'm the bad guy here.
And talk radio.
It's not just me, although we all know that I am talk radio.
So I'm sitting here, I'm just doing what I always do, speaking truth to kooks and putting all this in proper perspective and doing a deep analysis of all this stuff.
And all of a sudden, now the slings and arrows are coming at me.
Folks, I have learned over the course of my Sterling career that when that happens, it means I'm winning.
It means we're winning.
I mean, they savaged me over tax cuts.
Well, that's heartless, cold-hearted Chris.
Limbo doesn't care.
He's sidling up to the rich, saying what welfare reform, any number of issues.
When they start, I don't care who, either the GOP elite inside the Beltway or the Libs, whenever they start attacking like this, it means we're winning.
Otherwise, they would ignore us.
And there's a little frustration, too, folks, because these inside the Beltway types, I'll tell you what this reminds me of.
I've told you about this.
I used to go to these country club, blue-blood, Republican dinner parties out in the Hamptons in the 90s.
And all these rich Republican contributors come up to me.
You got to stop those Christians on abortion.
They're going to wreck the party.
I said, what are you talking to me for?
They listen to you.
Yeah?
Well, you can't get by without them.
If you want to be a winner as a Republican, you better find a way to coexist with those people because they are not the enemy.
The Democrats are your enemy.
Well, a lot of these guys' wives were just henpecking them to death over this about abortion.
But look at where it's ended up.
The bottom line is abortion didn't wreck the Republican Party.
Abortion helped define what has come to be known as values voters.
And abortion is now losing in the arena of ideas.
It's now a minority who favor it.
It's under 50%.
So these blue bloods and country clubs are out of touch, and they resent the fact that they don't have the power that talk radio and other town hall forums do.
Back in just a second.
Under fire today, folks, but I'm at the top of the mountain.
So they're shooting uphill.
800-282-2882.
A couple relevant paragraphs from David Brooks' piece.
What bothers you about the restrictionists, because that's me and you, and I think you've include Mark Levin in this piece.
What bothers you about the restrictionists is not that they're primitives or racists.
Thank you, Mr. Brooks.
They're not.
It's their imperviousness, their unwillingness to compromise.
They don't have the numbers to govern, but they think they have the numbers to destroy.
And then there's this.
They trumpet the studies indicating that immigration decreases wages, but ignore the ones that show it stimulates wages and growth.
They mention the strains that first-generation immigrants put on social services, but ignore the evidence that immigrants' children are so productive, they more than compensate for the cost.
They talk about the criminal immigrants, but they look past the vast majority who are religious and family-oriented.
Now, that is a straw, but we don't ignore any of this.
I don't say that they're all criminals.
Don't deny that many of them have faith.
I don't even put them down, period.
You know, this is one example of how this has gotten out of hand.
People seem to forget the word illegal is in front of here of the word immigrant.
And also, I have said, I don't even think this is about immigration.
I think it's just some people seeking a better life and wanting a job in this country.
They're not assimilating.
We're not even debating this in the proper context.
But I'll tell you, I do reject the false arguments about the net financial benefit, i.e., the public service costs.
All you got to do is look at Prop 187.
All you have to do is look at Arizona.
You can look at a number of places that have been infested here with an illegal immigrant wave and population, and you tell me that there's a net benefit to their arrival when it comes to propping up the social safety.
I'm going to reject that right off the bat.
Now, this first little line, they don't have the numbers to govern.
I mean, you and me, and the leaders of the insurgency here in America.
You know, outside the beltway, we're an insurgency.
Inside the beltway, the best and the brightest, you know, going to make sure the country heads down the right track.
We are too clueless, unsophisticated, and uneducated to have the slightest idea what we're even talking about.
And we're dangerous because so many of you are stupid too, that when you believe people like me, why, we've got a major problem in the country.
But then they, Mr. Brooks comforts himself with the notion that, quote, they don't have the numbers to govern, but they think they have the numbers to destroy.
I'm not trying to govern anything, nor am I trying to destroy anything.
This is an upbeat, positive, optimistic program.
Love of country, doing the right thing.
That's what we focus on here as often as possible.
Destroy?
What are we trying to destroy?
Has Mr. Brooks forgot there's a whole political party that is bent on destroying this administration and this country's national security?
And yet the big enemy today is people like me and you.
They don't have the numbers to govern, but they think they have the numbers to destroy.
It reminds me what Fred Barnes said, who's also part of this inside the Beltway cabal on Britt Hume show on Tuesday night.
He said, Limbaugh and his crowd at the end of the day don't have any votes, so it doesn't matter.
Don't have any votes.
The way of treating us is inconsequential.
I guess they misunderstand the motive of the program here.
We're not trying to affect any outcome, just trying to create as many informed people as possible.
We're doing a radio program here.
I guess the editors at the Weekly Standard and one or two conservative writers for the New York Times, though, I guess they do have a lot of votes.
And of course, they have the pulse of the nation and the movement.
They understand what's going on.
They have votes.
Of course, they think they do influence White House policy.
And they might.
And in fact, if they do, that might be one explanation why Bush is in such deep doo-doo with the GOP base.
Because he's getting a bunch of advice from people to whom the rest of the country is a mystery.
These are the country club types.
They're not country clubs.
They hang close enough around them.
I don't know how in touch they are.
But standing by all this is a recipe for disaster down the road 20 years ago versus where we are today.
Imagine it getting even worse.
How many votes can Fred Barnes or David Brooks bring to the table?
How many votes can I bring to the table?
And I could ask them how many politicians ask them to write favorable pieces about them before an election.
I could tell you how many of them call here and want to get on this show.
They don't get on because we don't have guests.
I know when it comes to measuring the views of the base, people like you, they dismiss you and programs like this.
And I really think it's because there's a fear or a little bit of an anger out there at the influence programs like this do have versus what people who write columns inside the Beltway have.
And it's always been this way, folks.
There's nothing new about it.
And it's just interesting to see this erupting now on the right side of the center aisle.
But it just means we're winning.
And that's what all these attacks mean.
I guess Mr. Brooks and some in his circle seem concerned about how I, quote unquote, am leading the grassroots in the wrong direction and how the elites are marching on regardless.
And when they say they don't have any votes, that really doesn't matter.
But Barnes accused me of being anti-immigrant.
There's been no such statement out of my mouth ever.
I thought these people were more informed and a little bit more up to speed on what actually happens here.
At any rate, let me grab a couple phone calls here before we go to the break.
Raymond, outside of San Francisco, welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Superfied Ditto, sir.
I salute your intellect.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate that.
You know what?
This paper, these papers that were written, he's trying to base it on this is your policy position because you're a Republican, not on your intellectual dissemination of the facts.
And that's what these people inside the Beltway don't get.
Your program does not brainwash us, it informs us.
And then we come to an intellectual, well-thought-out position based on those facts.
And the fact is that this nation will be overrun with immigrants if just by whatever we wave our magic wand and make everybody legal.
Well, I don't know about overrun, but I mean, the possibility clearly exists.
If those numbers happened, it would be overrun.
Oh, absolutely.
But, you know, you touched on something very important.
A lot of people use the word brainwashing.
And after 18 years, it's amazing to still run into this that people think that you people in this audience are a bunch of absolute idiots, mind-numbed robots.
And you get your marching orders on this show.
What they don't understand, I guess now this would include people on the right in certain parts of the country.
What they don't get is that I don't brainwash anybody, and I'm nobody's spingali.
I validate what you already think in some cases.
And there are huge numbers of people out there that fall into this category, and those numbers are frightening.
And so to diminish the numbers, the Constitution of those numbers has to be made up of nitwits and gullible, easily led fools.
And of course, this represents a grave threat because that means demagogues can rule.
And it's all rooted in, especially when the criticism is dishonest.
You have to say things, the right things that have been said on this program that have not been said ever.
Then it indicates there's a little resentment, fear, maybe some jealousy.
And the desire to discredit is simply an indication, as I said at the top of the program, that we're winning on this, and they're frustrated by it.
Maria in Delray Beach, Florida.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Delighted to talk with you.
I work in the medical community, and I tell you, it doesn't take very, you know, a rocket scientist to figure this one out.
All you got to do is know when you go in the hospital and you pay $30 for one aspirin, or you pay your insurance for your health care, you're paying for every illegal immigrant that needs medical care and many other things.
But it is, and it's a cycle that's happening that impacts us in other ways because the hospitals and the physicians aren't making enough money because a lot of this is going into freebies at the ER and all of that.
And then they're forced to start hiring employees that don't speak English that bring down the medical community even more.
It's a complete nightmare.
I know.
Do you know that there are 11 hospital emergency rooms that have shut down in Southern California?
And it's happening here too, Rush.
Simply because it's not very far away.
Yeah, I know.
I know people showing up have no ability to pay.
Everybody else has to pay.
And if outside people refuse to pay and don't, then there's no revenue coming in.
And Bamo, you've lost 11 emergency rooms in Southern California.
Exactly.
So that's an enormous impact.
Yeah, I know.
It does.
I don't, you know, I'm trying to imagine the other side of this.
I don't mind trying to find virtue in people wanting to improve their lives and come to this country and do so.
I'm not opposed to that happening.
But the easiness and the willingness to ignore certain realities about who and the numbers and the word illegal is that's what's striking to me.
I'm having a tough time understanding what it is they don't see about this that I do.
I guess it's because they think that views that you and I have are rooted in some sort of bigotry.
Oh, no, they said it wasn't bigotry or racism.
I don't know what it is.
Heartless.
Oh, heartlessness, and it's not compassionate.
That's right.
They have families, they have children that are trying to improve their lives, and immigration is what's made America great.
Well, this isn't immigration.
This is a job quest.
There is so little assimilation going on.
I told you the story the other day.
A friend of mine, I was out of L.A.
I was out at a well-known golf club, and I played around with the pro at the guy who was from Minnesota.
And you can't go out there and escape this.
You can't go out there.
I mean, the only way you can go out there and talk about this and not talk about this is get involved in the entertainment community with some brain-dead person who has no clue even that John McCain's alive.
That's the only way you can escape it.
And so I'm talking to his golfers.
He says, you know, I moved out here from Minnesota three years ago and I went to the DMV.
I had to get my driver's license switched over to California.
So I talked to the guy, chatted him up for about a minute or two, just getting to know him and asking about policies.
And we got down to business.
What language would you like to take the test in?
What language?
I've just been talking to you in English for two minutes.
I have to ask, sir.
Has to ask.
What language do you want to take the test in?
It's a little bit of an illustration of the point that assimilation and acculturation are not really a focus of any of this.
And let's be honest, folks, let's not leave the politics out.
Let's stick inside the beltway.
We know damn well that as far as the Democratic Party is concerned, these people represent nothing but voters and future victims.
The Democratic Party doesn't want these people to become prosperous.
That'd be the worst thing that could happen to them.
They become prosperous, rich Republicans, beneficiaries of tax cuts.
No, the Democrats want these people to remain downtrodden, poor, uneducated.
That's a Democrat base.
And they need victims.
This economy is doing so well that they're running out of victims.
So this wave of illegal immigrants represents a great new source of votes for them.
They're out there recruiting in these marches for crying out loud.
And then you look at the marches and you look at who's sponsoring them.
You find a bunch of anti-American, you know, pro-Marxist bunch of people.
And you hear Ted Kennedy talking about this, the new civil rights movement.
I mean, this is not about immigration, let's face it.
And frankly, some of the Republicans.
The Republicans, this is, Shelby Steele has it exactly right.
This is nothing but guilt.
Why, and you just said it.
Why, they're poor people.
They have families.
And we're the rich, powerful United States.
And we're only 5% of the population, but we're raping the world, 25% of its resources.
No wonder they want to come here because this is where everything is because we've stolen it.
We can't be mean.
So the Republicans, they don't want to be seen as cold-hearted and cruel or any of this or so.
So they run along and get in this thinking that this new wave of people is going to say, hey, the Republicans are pretty nice.
Maybe we could vote for them.
So you got into competition.
Republicans trying to out Democrat Democrats.
And we get this newfangled asinine immigration bill.
Back in just a second.
And we're back, talent on loan from God, Rush Limbaugh, leading a parade of mind-numbed robots to the promised land here on the EIB network.
You know, something that I've been waiting for the environmentalist wackos to take a position on all this legal, illegal immigration, and they are strangely silent.
Now, the environmentalist wackos, of course, blame us.
They blame the United States for practically everything.
They also blame us for global warming.
They blame us for pollution.
They blame us for fossil fuels.
We've raped the world's resources, and we're only 5% of the population and so forth.
Now, you would think that if they were consistent, they would be alarmed at this wave of millions and millions and millions of new people coming into this country.
Wouldn't you think that the more immigrants we allow in, the more air we're going to pollute, and the more trees that we're going to need to cut down, the more gasoline that we're going to burn?
It would seem to me that the environmentalist wackos would have dire threats and be making dire threats and telling us of extreme consequences of this.
But you don't hear anything at all.
If the Kyoto Treaty, the Kyoto whatever, the protocol, if it were intellectually honest, you'd end up blaming much of Mexico for our pollution.
Given their theories, I mean, if the more people, the more population, the more technological advancement, the more people living a better life, I mean, that's their theory, the worse a global environmental situation is.
Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post yesterday actually has a number of things in it that are an excellent response to Mr. Brooks today in the New York Times, still dodging immigration's truths.
I don't have time in this segment to read the whole thing, but listen just a couple sentences here.
Hardly anyone is discussing immigration issues candidly.
It's politically inexpedient to do so.
We can be a lawful society and a welcoming society simultaneously, to use the president's phrase, but we cannot be a welcoming society for limitless numbers of Latin America's poor without seriously compromising our own future.
And indeed, the future of many of the Latinos already here.
Yet that's precisely what the president and many senators, Democratic and Republicans, support by endorsing large guest worker programs and an expansion of today's system of legal visas.
In practice, these proposals would result in substantial increases of low, skilled, uneducated immigrants.
How fast can they assimilate?
Well, we can't know.
But we can consult history, and it's very sobering.
In 1972, Hispanics were 5% of the U.S. population.
Their median household income was 74% of that of the non-Hispanic white households.
In 2004, 32 years later, Hispanics had gone from 5% to 14% of the population, but their median household income fell to 70% of the level of non-Hispanic whites.
These numbers suggest that rapid immigration of low-skilled workers and rapid assimilation are at odds.
Some immigrant families make huge advances, but many don't.
And newcomers represent a constant drag.
There are a couple more things here, but I've loved Samuelson's work, and he's written on immigration a number of times, and he aims right between the eyes.
Which is what we're not getting inside the beltway from practically anybody.
Back in just a sec.
So it's absurd to believe that these immigration numbers of 100 million, 200 million, whatever, 90 million could be reached.
What did they tell us the original cost of Medicare and the War on Poverty was going to be?
Medicare, I think the original cost was $9 billion.
It's about to break our bank now.
Who says numbers in Washington are going to stay at what Washington says they're going to be?
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