RUSH: To the phones, to Chicago. This is Paul, nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh?
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Yes, sorry for my not perfect English. I’m a Polish native. Mr. Limbaugh, I might have missed one of your programs, (unintelligible) since like maybe seven years ago. I may miss your program. I never hear from you about what (unintelligible) about government should do, if anything, in order to solve the illegal immigration issue, you know, long-term (unintelligible) speaking, do you have any position on it? And if you allow later I can also (unintelligible) couple comments.
RUSH: Uhhh, well, yeah, I think I have offered not a solution per se. We already have laws on the books about immigration. All we’d have to do, Paul, is enforce them. We have a bunch of different categorizations of visas. The legal immigration in this country is a long process. It requires answering questions, taking tests, ascertaining whether or not the new arrivals want to assimilate and actually become part of our culture. We are ignoring the law when it comes to immigration on our southern border, and all we’d have to do is just enforce that law like we enforce it everywhere else against the Europeans, against the Asians, I mean everybody else in the world. It doesn’t require anything new here. It just requires our own federal government obeying its own laws. It’s not complicated.
CALLER: Understood, but the fact is in the States we have about 30 million people, illegal status, so, you know, the question is, because I don’t know what the existing immigration law is saying, but the fact is we have so many millions of people here, the question is besides, of course, let them leave, you know, and that’s a solution —
RUSH: I don’t see the contradiction here. That’s like saying we’ve got a bunch of people who have committed murder — well, let’s leave murder out of it. We’ve got a bunch of people who have robbed banks and stolen automobiles and we think it’s about 30 million of them we haven’t caught, but we’re going to really crack down now and make sure that no more banks are robbed and no more cars are stolen but the people that have stolen the cars and robbed the banks we’re going to figure a way to give them amnesty. You know, illegal is illegal. The biggest problem with all this is that a lot of people who do not want to enforce the law — like I saw a headline the other day, Paul, that said: ‘Illegal Aliens Accused of Breaking the Law,’ as though that was news to somebody in the media reporting the story. If we’re not going to maintain the integrity of our own borders, we’re going to lose our sovereignty, we’re going to cease to be the nation that we are. This is not really complicated. It may be hard in a compassion sense, but it’s not really complicated.
CALLER: But (unintelligible) but again besides, you know, forcing the law, and forcing people to leave the country, do you think the federal government should solve it allowing illegal to stay here and (unintelligible)? Just, you know, thinking about it, how the government could or should solve this, thinking that those people want to be here and what do you think, what term, if any, would be under consideration of government to do it.
RUSH: Well, there a lot of people that want to be here and there is no country in the world that is as easy to emigrate legally to as the United States. If these people couldn’t get work, they would leave. It’s that simple. This new Arizona law is acting as its own deportation law. People are leaving Arizona because they know now the law’s going to be enforced, they know now that they can’t get hired, so they’re leaving. Now, I know the point of your question, because I’m host, and I am well aware of many people trying to trick the host. It’s a game that callers make. And what you’re trying to get me to do is say something deathly unkind about the so-called 30 million illegals here. What you’re hoping I will say is, ‘Round ’em up and kick ’em out, and if they won’t go, throw ’em out,’ that’s what you want me to say. And I’m not going to say that. I have never said, whatever number are here illegally, ‘Round ’em up and deport ’em.’ It isn’t realistic. You want to diminish the secure-the-borders argument when that’s the number one priority. We have to do that, we have to stop the influx, that’s not insignificant. So you can’t pose a question to me, ‘Okay, Mr. Limbaugh, after we secure the borders…’ the borders are key. And then we come up with a plan, I could give you two or three of them that would help legalize these people if they’re willing to assimilate. We don’t want a Balkanized America here, and that’s what this is leading to as well. It really isn’t complicated. It’s just a matter of following the law.
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RUSH: Let me ask you, since this immigration question keeps coming up: Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over when we know it doesn’t work? How many amnesties have we granted? We had Simpson-Mazzoli when Reagan was in office, where we gave amnesty to two or three million people. We tried it once at least since then. It doesn’t work. If you’re not going to protect and enforce your own border, you can give manifest to all the people in the country illegally but you’re not doing one thing to dissuade anybody from continuing to come here. In fact, when you give them amnesty, you are in fact, perhaps, motivating or inspiring them to keep coming. If these people couldn’t get work they would leave — and they’re having trouble getting work now because everybody’s having trouble getting work because of the economic downturn.
So we know that granting amnesty doesn’t work. We tried it 24 years ago. It only made matters worse. Yet here we’re back, ‘We gotta grant amnesty,’ and because the people talking about granting amnesty, let me repeat, are not interested in solving the problem. They need more voters, pure and simple. They’re not trying to fix the country, solve a problem. They’re not even trying to help the illegal immigrants. They’re just being used. This is just a bunch of selfish politicians, wherever you find them, who look at this big group of people as potential voters. They’re also looked at as potential wards of the state, future members of the totally dependent class which is the best way to get their votes. So why does everybody insist that the only solution to our immigration problem is to do something we’ve already tried and has failed miserably? You know, we think, we tell ourselves we can change the climate of the world.
We can change the climate of the world! We can stop all this global warming. But we can’t stop people coming across our border. We just can’t. Such a shame. We can’t stop people from coming across the border. We’re going to change the climate of the planet, there’s no question we can do that.The ChiComs had an earthquake, remember? They asked for assistance. The ChiComs were asking for aid for their recent earthquake. There’s only one United States, and it is always under attack. It always has been under attack. The difference now is that our threat contains an internal component as well as external.