(Playing of the Star Spanglish Banner.)
RUSH: That’s Jose and the Illegals or (Jose y Los Illegales) and the Star Spanglish Banner. It’s great to have you with us, by the way, on the program today. This from the Salt Lake Tribune. They just updated mere moments ago. ‘Angry Utahns by the hundreds are calling, e-mailing and faxing Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, demanding he oppose an immigration bill’ that’s in the Senate right now. ‘Those voters generally receive a coy answer. ‘My public position is that I’m reviewing the amendments,’ Bennett said Tuesday. It’s a ploy meant to defuse emotion. But here’s what Bennett’s staffers are not saying: he plans to vote for it. And he points to St. George as part of the reason why. St. George is the fastest-growing metro area in the nation, mostly because people from California and Las Vegas continue to relocate there. In many ways, this Washington County economic powerhouse is fueled by workers from Mexico and other Latin American countries. ‘One of the realities is our economy is dependent on labor that is coming from illegal immigrants and that is true of St. George,’ Bennett said.’ Now, Orrin ‘Hatch hasn’t said how he will vote, but his office has been hit by a similar deluge of voters arguing against the immigration compromise. ‘The intensity of the callers is tremendous,’ said spokeswoman Heather Barney. ‘Many are very very angry.”
This is the thing that irritates me about this. I don’t think right now they care what you think. They cared what you thought when it came to the Dubai Ports Deal, but they don’t care what you think about this. They are locking arms in the Senate to force this on the country, and it’s nothing short of scary. Many people have said they’ve never seen quite a divide between constituents and representatives and senators in a long time, and it seems to be deepening. The more they hear from you it seems like the more dug-in in their position to oppose what you want they become. It’s sort of like a human nature thing in the sense that nobody likes to be told what to do. I’m not saying some of these guys don’t support it on their own for whatever inexplicable reasons to us, but it is clear that all of this outpouring of complaints that they are hearing is causing them to stiffen their backs. Now, there are a lot of things that if you read this bill — and the first two stories I have here in the stack are indications of all kinds of things in this bill that literally make no sense, and the president’s out there saying, ‘Read the bill.’
I’m wondering: ‘Who has read the whole bill, who is supporting it?’ Stanley Kurtz of National Review Online has done some great work on ‘chain migration.’ Now, you know what chain migration is. (If you don’t, stick with me on this.) Chain migration, according to Stanley Kurtz, is killing Europe and causing serious difficulties here in the United States as well. ‘In conjunction with New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are sponsoring amendments designed to strengthen and expand family reunification policies, thus making the chain migration problem far worse than it already is.’ Now, the point is that everybody is out there saying, ‘This is not about families.’ Well, it’s about families and meritocracy. It’s about work. But the fact is, it is about families! ‘The other day, Sen. Menendez gave a speech in which he rejected the term ‘chain migration’ as ‘dehumanizing.’ Well, it’s a helpful term in common use among academics — very much including academics who have no problem at all with chain migration.’ Kurtz links to an ‘article on chain migration among Hispanic immigrants in the United States. The piece gives supporters and opponents of the practice a chance to sound off.’ Now, ‘the picture it paints,’ according to Stanley Kurtz at NRO, ‘is far from comforting. The article focuses on the story of one man, Pablo Baltazar, legalized in the 1986 amnesty,’ Simpson-Mazzoli. ‘Baltazar was able to bring over the entire, extended Baltazar family by importing all nine of his siblings, followed by their spouses, and children. More disturbing — and in a clear echoing of the European pattern — the article notes, ‘Chain migration has cleared out [an] entire village in Mexico.
‘And it has turned areas of rural North Carolina into places where Spanish is the dominant language.’ That is the heart of the problem. Not only does chain migration make nonsense of numerical limits, it transfers entire extended clans — even whole villages — from one country to another. By setting up a little world that’s culturally and linguistically just like the originating country, chain migration effectively blocks assimilation,’ and this bill promotes chain migration while people are out there saying it does just the opposite! ‘Amnesty isn’t the only serious danger in this bill. If either the Clinton or Obama amendments pass, the story of the Baltazar clan will be magnified many times over. But the kicker is that, while claiming to end chain migration, the immigration bill as written will actually accelerate extended family reunification (by clearing out the huge existing applicant backlog) for the next eight years. So even without the Clinton and Obama amendments, we are looking at a chain migration fiasco,’ with this bit of legislation. Those of you in this audience instinctively know this because it’s happening now, to one degree or another — and then we have Senator Bennett (God love him; God bless him) talking about how we need these illegals to support the economic base of an area in his state of Utah. Once again, we are, I guess, being asked to accept the notion that the future of America is dependent on low-wage, uneducated, unskilled labor. It’s mind-boggling.
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RUSH: I just got a note from a friend who says that when Hillary heads into Utah to campaign, she’ll probably announce she’s discovered some long-lost Hispanic bloodline in her family, and wear a sombrero to the campaign appearance instead of a Yankee hat. Welcome back. El Rushbo, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, while in service to humanity. In the Wall Street Journal today, their editorial is also available at OpinionJournal.com: ‘The Legal Visa Crunch,’ and the Wall Street Journal pretty much in support of this bill, or they have been. This editorial says, ‘The Senate bill is worse than current law for skilled immigrants.’ I don’t have time to read the whole thing here, but we will link to it at RushLimbaugh.com. ‘The vote last week to halve the size of a guest-worker program for low-skilled workers is a big step in the wrong direction; skimping on visas will only lead to more illicit border crossings,’ the theory being that if you let 400 grand in here a year you’re going to be putting less pressure on people coming in here illegally. What’s the difference? I swear!
I swear some of this just does not compute or make any sense at all. Whether 400,000 are coming in legally or not, they’re all going to be legal once they get in here, once this thing passes. This notion that they have to have been here prior to January 1st, who’s going to be able to prove that or disprove it, when somebody says they were when they weren’t? At any rate… ‘[T]he goal here is to move immigration policy away from a system based on family connections and toward one based on skills. The Senate measure calls for a ‘merit’ system that awards points to would-be immigrants based on their education and work experience. But employers who recruit foreign professionals — and aren’t too keen on Uncle Sam taking over those duties — are balking at the proposal [in the Senate] on grounds that it will introduce all sorts of inefficiencies to their hiring.’ Now, we’re talking about legal here. This is stunning to go through this, and when you look at the hoops and the restrictions that are being placed on legal immigrants, highly skilled, educated people from around the world who want to come into this country.
When you look at the hoops they have to jump through and the limits — and boy, we are going out of our way to control the number of those that can get in here! Yeah, we’re going to raise their fees! We’re treating legals here as though they’re the illegals. ‘U.S. businesses aren’t looking for skilled workers in general; they’re looking for people with specific skills. And in the high-tech industry especially, where the demand for new products and services is constantly changing, employers need the flexibility to fill critical positions as quickly as possible. The last thing Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments needs is uncertainty about whether the workers they want to hire will pass some bureaucratic point test. If the Senate wants the U.S. to keep attracting the world’s best and brightest, this bill is an odd way of showing it.’ So here, on the legal side, we are focusing on merit, not families. On the illegal side, it’s chain migration. ‘Okay, Pablo, come on in, and then bring everybody! Your brothers, your sisters, and their wives bring everybody in, Pablo.’ It’s not based on merit at all. In fact, on the illegal side, the less merit, the less skill, apparently, the better!
‘Last month the supply of H-1B temporary visas for foreign professionals not only ran out in one day but [it] did so six months before the October start of the 2008 fiscal year. It’s the fourth straight year that companies have exhausted the supply,’ of H1B temporary visas; these are the highly educated, qualified immigrants, ‘before the start of the year, which is a clear market signal that the cap should be raised,’ on the number of people allowed in, ‘if not removed. The Senate bill would increase the supply of H-1B’s by 50,000 to 115,000 and put in place a market-based escalator that couldn’t exceed 180,000.’ Now, the Journal says here, ‘That’s an improvement, but it will still leave too many firms in the lurch. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects growth of about 100,000 jobs per year in computer and math science occupations between 2004 and 2014. Worse, the visa increase is combined with other provisions that seem designed to make employing foreign professionals both costly and cumbersome. Larger companies can probably live with the proposed increase in the fee for each H-1B visa hire (and renewal) to $5,000 from $1,500. But companies would also be forced to prove for the year surrounding the hiring of a foreigner — six months before and six months after — that a U.S. worker has not been displaced.’
Unbelievable! So we’re going to go out and we’re going to hire — and we’re going to allow 180,000 max, qualified highly educated, skilled workers to come in, but the employer has to prove that a qualified American hasn’t lost his job in the process. Now, one of the reasons for this so-called economic boom that’s taking place in Senator Bennett’s Utah, and he says (paraphrased), ‘In Georgetown we couldn’t get away and this community wouldn’t survive without the influx of the illegal immigrant labor force.’ Why do you think that is? Why, people are fleeing California and Arizona in droves to get away from the influx! Some of this stuff is so plain as day, it’s right out in the front of everybody’s nose at his, and it’s just being ignored. That town in Utah would not be booming if so many people from California and Arizona weren’t leaving the states and fleeing for their lives. That’s why that town is booming because people are moving to Utah. They’re moving to Idaho. They’re moving to Montana and other places from California and from Arizona. Meanwhile, on the legal side… Can you imagine if, on the illegal side, employers that hired them had to prove that an American was not losing a job in the process, for six months before and six months after?
Try this: ”The H-1B program is already costly, and all things being equal there’s already a heavy incentive to hire Americans,’ says Robert Hoffman, Oracle’s vice president of government and public affairs. ‘But there comes a point where the program is so costly that we have to decide if it’s better to move this work offshore. And that’s something that can’t be in our overall national interests.” They’re talking about in order to find the qualified people they wan — at the wages they want. Let’s all admit here that an immigrant, highly skilled and highly qualified — and I know some of you in this audience are just making a mad dash to the phone, saying, ‘Wait a minute! This is really no different than the illegal side, Rush. They’re just trying to get cheap labor in there. There are plenty of Americans to do these H1B jobs, but they want to pay the immigrants less money than us because they’ll accept less money.’ I understand that. Labor costs are one of the primary objectives businesses tackle, try to keep down and so forth. But this guy from Oracle said (paraphrased), ‘Hey, we may have to take the company offshore,’ i.e., getting away from US law on this, ‘to hire the people we need, to hire the people we want.’ He says, ‘If we have to do that, we’re going to take a PR hit. That cannot be in our overall interests or the country’s interests.’
The Journal concludes here: ‘It’s obvious that the immigration bill was written with the fate of 12 million illegal aliens foremost in mind. But we hope Congress is mindful that foreign professionals also fill important niches in the U.S. labor market that help keep American companies competitive and jobs stateside. Immigration policies should acknowledge…’ Now, get this graph from the Journal editorial today. ‘Immigration policies should acknowledge that the U.S. is not producing enough home-grown computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers to fill our labor needs.’ Now, I know there are a bunch of you computer scientists and mathematicians and engineers out there screaming at the radio saying, ‘That’s not true! It’s not true! They just won’t pay what we’re worth as Americans.’ I know. I know you’re out there. But the Journal is passing it off here as that there’s a shortage of qualified people in these industries — and, by the way, the high-tech Silicon Valley people will agree with that. I’ve talked to a couple of them. They have called this program. They’ve lamented the hoops and the restrictions of the H1B visa program. ‘Last year, U.S. universities awarded more than half of their master’s degrees and 71% of their Ph.D.s in electrical engineering to foreign nationals. It’s foolhardy,’ says the Journal, ‘to educate these individuals and then effectively expel them so that they can put their human capital to work for U.S. competitors. There’s no shortage of countries that would be thrilled to benefit from a U.S. brain drain.’ It’s probably happening. We are probably kicking them out of the country, for whatever reason, getting them out of there. We’re educating the rest of the world and they become our competitors. There’s so much wrong with so much of this, and it’s so plain as day. It’s right out in front of everybody’s face to see, and I guess the fix, ‘It just too big, Rush. It’s just too hard!’ It sounds to me, though, like the way we’re dealing with legal immigration would be the ideal way to deal with the illegals.
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RUSH: Now, there’s a story from TheHill.com today. ‘House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber. The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House. The Senate immigration measure requires that illegal immigrants pay back taxes before becoming citizens, opening the door to a House protest, dubbed a ‘blue slip’ for the color of its paper.’ Supporters in the Senate, they’re on their Memorial Day recess, and you people are giving them all kinds of static. There’s a wildfire out there. All of these senators are hearing about it. The Senate is reaching out to their Republican conservative friends in the House, and the House guys are not taking to this well. They say we don’t want to do this but a blue slip ‘may be their only recourse to stop a process they believe Democrats will dominate’ once they go to conference with the House.
‘The back-taxes provision that could trigger the blue slip came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continues to take heavy fire on the presidential hustings for supporting the immigration deal. McCain introduced a back-taxes amendment after a conference call in which Republican bloggers…’ that was primarily Captain Ed Morrissey of Captain Quarters. ‘…mentioned reports that the Bush administration had asked that this year’s bill not force the very costly process of tax collection among illegal immigrants.’ So McCain was out there trying to score points as a presidential candidate, (McCain impression) ‘I’m gonna put it in there. Ya got it, Sailor? We’re gonna put it in!’ So McCain put it back in, after some people had persuaded him to take it out, or the president wanted it taken out. So putting it back in, if it stays, the Republicans can say, ‘This bill is flawed, can’t go with it this way.’
Now, it could easily be fixed by simply the Senate doing this and taking the back taxes thing out of it. We already know they’re going to wave the $5,000 fine. The fine doesn’t even kick in unless they apply for citizenship. They don’t have to do that because the minute the bill is signed into law they become legal. So if they eliminate the back taxes provision, the firestorm resulting from that, from people like you is going to be even more intense than what’s happening now. So, anyway, that’s the latest manifestation of this. You know what would be ideal, is if this thing just got bottlenecked and became part of the presidential campaign. Make it an issue that is debated by the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. That’s how this actually should occur. Not some of this backroom, under cover of darkness speed to push this through while everybody is asleep before they know what’s happening. Luke in Roosevelt, Utah, glad you called, sir, nice to have you on the EIB.
CALLER: Rush it’s an honor to get to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I had another topic but once I heard the thing about Bob Bennett, I was just trying to call in and I can’t believe I got in but I was just telling your screener, I think it’s absolutely absurd and offensive that this state to which I was born and raised in will collapse without illegal workers who have been only been here for what, the last 50 years at the tops. This state was — I’m sure many states are like this, I can only speak for Utah, this state was founded on principles and on values and on moral responsibility. And the fact that this guy who I’ve actually kind of supported would say our state’s going to collapse and we need these illegal workers to keep our state thriving, I mean it’s crazy.
RUSH: Let me read the quote to you, here’s what he said. ‘One of the realities is that our economy is dependent on labor that is coming from illegal immigrants, and that is true of St. George, Utah.’
CALLER: (Laughing.) I think it’s disgraceful.
RUSH: That is a stunning statement. That is an absolutely stunning statement because what he’s saying is that the future of Utah depends on low wage, unskilled and uneducated workers. Now, why do you think that there are jobs in St. George, Utah? Why is it booming? Why do you think that there are jobs for low skill, low wage, uneducated workers? It’s because people are moving there from California, Arizona, and other places that are being overrun with illegal immigration, people are just fleeing, they’re just getting out. Rather than stand and fight it, they’re just leaving. Utah is one of the places they’re going. So they’re revitalizing areas like St. George, creating the jobs for these people. It’s a which came first, the chicken or the egg situation, and what Bennett apparently is saying is that St. George wouldn’t be where it is without the illegal immigrant employee base. It’s the exact opposite. They wouldn’t have jobs if there weren’t people there to hire them.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: Look, it’s what I said, folks, they have no intention of listening to you. They’re going to link their hands, link their arms, they’re going to force this on us if they can get away with it. It’s what it appears to be. Jerry in San Rafael, California, I’m glad you waited, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I appreciate you teaching us and educating us in how to understand things that are going on about this.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate it.
CALLER: There’s a point that I don’t think we’ve really addressed and maybe something to think about for the future but it’s the wrapping that everything comes in. It’s sort of like the means and the methods of the evildoers that want to change us in ways not beneficial to us. I’ll give some examples. The immigration thing, and actually everything they bring up to us has a framework that has a response in us. A response for those who believe them that they have a work right, and a response in most of us of some emotional like ‘how can they be so crazy’ and we go back and we come on that basis. It also sets up their response to what we say, it gives them more power. What I learned a long time, maybe 40 years ago, first year of college type stuff, was the Communist Manifesto and the point of it being psychology, that that’s their implement of war, is that they tweak us and use it in every possible way to get at us. Somewhere I heard that the only thing they spent less on the money for warfare type of things and all that jazz was the money they spent on psychological development. So they use that to tweak us and —
RUSH: Let me step in and give an example. Interesting that you mention this, because Dr. Sowell has a piece today at National Review Online, and his headline here is: ‘Want to Make It a No-Brainer? It’s all in the words you use.’ He starts this way. ‘It has long been recognized that those on the political Left are more articulate than their opponents. The words they choose for the things they are for or against make it easy to decide whether to be for or against those things. Are you for or against ‘social justice’? A no-brainer. Who is going to be for injustice? What about ‘a living wage’? Who wants people not to have enough money to live on? Then there is ‘affordable housing’ and ‘affordable health care.’ Who would want people to be unable to afford to put a roof over their heads or unable to go to a doctor when they are sick? In real life, the devil is in the details. But the whole point of political rhetoric is to make it unnecessary for you to have to go into the specifics before taking sides. You don’t need to know any economics to be in favor of ‘a living wage’ or ‘affordable housing.”
He’s got a point here because they come up with these terms, social justice, living wage, and we sit here and try to explain it, ‘No, that’s not what it is. It’s another liberal ploy to expand government, to try to come up with equality of outcomes. It’s not a living wage. It’s just a moniker. It’s just a term to get you to support them for their ultimate objective of more redistribution. It’s like the thing about Robert Bennett saying, ‘One of the realities is that our economy is dependent on labor that’s coming from illegal immigrants, and that’s true of St. George.’ Why in the world would anybody want that? Now, Bennett’s a Republican. I can tell you right now why liberal Democrats want that. These are people that are going to become dependent on an ever-larger welfare state. That’s exactly what they want out of this. They love economies that are dependent on that because that means those people are going to be dependent on the Democrats who run government. This is a huge power grab to make sure they get control and they never lose it again because there will be so many people that depend on government that they’ll never vote against Democrats, and they use these word games.
Conservatives, we talk about property rights or the market or judicial restraint or originalists, and of course, those terms do not convey immediate, understandable emotion, like social justice, affordable housing, affordable health care, and those sorts of things. And you know what I’ve always said — there’s a reason for this, by the way — liberalism is the most gutless choice you can make. It’s the easiest thing in the world you can do. All you have to do is basically be for everything, for social justice, and never think about it. After you say you’re for it and you go out and vote for people who say they’re going to provide it, you think you’ve been wonderful. Conservatism, on the other hand, is difficult, because it takes thought, application, time, energy, to understand it, and then after you have understood it, it takes even more time and energy to be able to explain it in a persuasive way. It’s not because it’s harder and it’s not because it doesn’t make as much sense as liberalism. It’s the exact opposite. The reason is, conservatism is an intellectual pursuit. It’s a mental pursuit to understand the various ways systems work, how freedom is irreplaceable in any free society working — property rights, market accountability, market economics, all these terms require definitions from people that require them, A, to listen, and, B, to think.
Now, once you get people to listen and think, you’ve got ’em forever. Once you have made somebody a conservative, they don’t turn back. But liberals don’t want to hear it, all they want to do is feel good, and they don’t want to hear about things that will cause a little ripple in the cocoon in which they live. That’s why I had to laugh when the Democrats were out there hiring George Lakoff, rhymes with, a guy to help them come up with words to communicate their ideas. What they do, they need help coming up with words and phrases that mask and disguise what they really want to do and penetrate your little heart, your emotions out there and trap you that way. Liberalism is gutless. Liberalism is easy. It takes no work; it takes no challenge; takes no mental application whatsoever. Liberalism today, in fact, is propelled by the emotions of rage and hatred.
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RUSH: I want to go back to this Robert Bennett quote that’s in the Salt Lake Tribune today, in the story by Matt Canham. Bennett is fielding all kinds of calls from people in Utah that are opposed to the immigration deal and he’s telling them he’s making up his mind, but the author of the story here claims that he’s already made up his mind. The staffers are not saying he plans to vote for it and one of his reasons why is St. George, Utah, fastest-growing metro area in the nation. Now, there’s a reason for that, and it’s not the arrival of illegal immigrants, mostly because people in California and Las Vegas continue to relocate there. They are fleeing states where their neighborhoods are infested with illegals and they’re seeking refuge where they think there aren’t any. And they get there, and of course, the illegals follow, they go to where the jobs are. So Bennett then says, ‘One of the realities is our economy is dependent on labor that is coming from illegal immigrants and that is true of St. George.’
Now, why do liberals want the uneducated poor, Third World masses moving here and not the well educated highly literate immigrants? We just shared with you this column, the editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Look at the restrictions and the enforcement and the attention paid to the admittance into this country of highly educated, highly skilled legal immigrants. It is the kind of attention that ought to be focused on the illegals. This is what the Republicans are missing. This is what they’re not getting and understanding. If they do get it and understand it, then they’ve fled the reservation, folks, they’re not Republicans anymore. Because when this same bill, Senator Kennedy, Senator McCain, writing all these restrictions on the H1B visas, all the legal, all the highly skilled, highly educated, ‘We’re going to put a limit on those. There are only going to be 150,000 a year, max, 180.’ Why is that? Why do they want all these uneducated poor Third World masses moving here and not the well educated? The answer is, uneducated are going to be far more receptive to the demagogic arguments from the left in which they promote rich against poor, the right to national affordable health care, social justice. Educated people are more open to debate and disagreement, and they are less inclined to become dependent, especially hard-working immigrants from foreign countries with strong family values.
Now, notice, too, what’s happening — what was not mentioned in this story — that Senator Bennett is carrying water for the construction industry, not the public interest generally. These jobs he’s talking about, the construction business, the place is booming, St. George is, and Senator Bennett knows that these people will have to be educated and receive health benefits, that they are not paying for. He knows full well. He knows that if he’s the guy seen out there as the one providing all that, then they’re going to keep voting for him. So the rest of the citizens of Utah — this is a microcosm for what’s happening in the country — the rest of the citizens of Utah and the country will have to have their taxes raised to pay for this. It’s called the redistribution of wealth. What’s going to end up happening is that the construction industry of St. George, Utah, will be subsidized by the rest of Senator Bennett’s constituents, and this is what voters need to understand. This is a massive desirous effort, and this is not an unintended consequence.
This is the design to bring as many of the poor Third World uneducated people, the masses into this country, and create a dependency need because obviously they’re uneducated, and they’re not going to earn high wages so they’re going to need people like you and me to pay their health care and their education and this sort of thing. ‘We’re a compassionate society, Rush, we’re not going to have them live in the streets. We’re not going to have them live beside the trash bin. We’re going to take care of them.’ Right, yeah, your taxes are going to go up in order to do that. You’re going to be subsidizing this influx. So we’ve got this booming place, St. George, a microcosm for what’s happening in a lot of the country. It’s said to be booming because of the arrival of the illegals, and guess what? We’re all going to end up subsidizing them. That’s what people have to understand about this. When the president comes out and accuses us of not understanding what’s here, we do better than most. They know what’s in it. They don’t want us to think that what we know is in it is right. Anyway, I gotta take a brief time-out here, folks. This stuff starts to agitate after awhile. That’s why I don’t want to talk about it three hours every day.