RUSH: Daniel in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir. I’m a longtime listener and first-time caller.

RUSH: Well, it’s great to have you here. Thank you much.

CALLER: No, thank you. I wanted to tell you: I’m a Border Patrol agent. I work down in Douglas. I wanted to talk about this immigration reform plan that Marco Rubio and several other senators are putting forth today. I’ve been looking over the text, and a lot of it is just the same Washington hackery that you see with every piece of legislation that comes out. What I told your call screener was, “I feel that compromising on the fiscal deal by essentially promising the spending cuts later, is the same thing as giving amnesty to illegal aliens and then promising a secure border.” I just don’t think that it’s gonna happen.

RUSH: Let me tell you what I heard and what I read. I forget where, but it was a blog post this morning. A Democrat on this blog post admitted that the whole notion of border security has been added to this immigration bill simply to give the Republicans a talking point; that the Democrats are not serious about it. So your instincts on this are right.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: They don’t want any the border control. Democrats want all these new voters — and so do the Republicans, in one degree or another.

CALLER: They really do. Rush, I’m a graduate student at the University of Arizona. My emphasis is in security studies. I’ve done, on my own initiative, interviews with a lot of these aliens. The majority don’t want to be here. They don’t want to live here. They want to come and work and then go back home. These are the same talking points that Republicans have been putting forth for years. In 1986, Ronald Reagan tried it, and it didn’t work. It’s the same exact thing that’s gonna happen now, and it’s unfortunate to see our senators and representatives pushing it.

RUSH: It’s what I just said: “Gun control” is not about guns, “health care” is not about health care, and “immigration” is not about immigration. And, by the way, I don’t say this lightly, and it’s not easy to say. Do you realize the easy thing would be to just say, “You know what, folks? There’s nothing we can do. We may as well go ahead here and acquiesce and try to secure the bored and move forward.” That would be the easy thing to do. But what’s being talked about here is not really immigration. On the Republican side, after the election when Romney lost, it didn’t take long — a matter of days — for the Republican consultancy class to start saying, “Well, we lost because the Hispanics hate us.

“We lost because of our position on amnesty and immigration. We lost because women hate us, ’cause we’re too cold-hearted when it comes to abortion,” and this kind of thing. So there’s a defensiveness here that is propelling a lot of people. Not every Republican, but there’s a defensiveness that’s inspiring them all. But I keep falling back on one thing that just doesn’t make sense to me, and maybe somebody can explain it. It’s the Democrats who keep telling us that the reason we’re losing elections and falling short is because we’re just not reaching out to Hispanics enough.

We’re not compassionate enough when it comes to immigration. Too many Hispanics think Republicans don’t like ’em and don’t want ’em to be here and wanna deport ’em. The Democrats tell us this. The Democrats are saying, “You guys are gonna have to moderate your views on this. You’re gonna have to become more like we are.” Now, my problem with this is I just can’t believe it. If the Democrats think that their position on immigration (let’s use that for an example) is the right one, and if the Democrats’ position is what’s getting all of that support from Hispanic voters, what I don’t understand is why would the Democrats want to give up some of those voters to the Republicans?

Can somebody help me out here?

What strikes me is something similar to the often-heard media and Democrat charge, “You better not criticize Obama! You guys, you’re just gonna scare the independents and they’re gonna be running right back to Democrats, ’cause they don’t like all this partisanship, and they don’t like this bickering.” Meanwhile, the most partisan people around are the Democrats! The most loud, argumentative, mean-spirited people around are the Democrats. Yet when they’re loud, mean-spirited, argumentative, and partisan, somehow that doesn’t bother the independents. They have no problem with it. But when the Republicans ostensibly get that way, then the independents say, “Screw you, guys! I don’t want any part of you.”

Well, I think it’s all a trick that’s worked, the purpose of which is to get the Republicans to shut up and to not criticize Obama. Now the idea that the Democrats are trying to help us get some of the Hispanic vote? I just don’t see that. I don’t see anywhere else in the political spectrum where the Democrats want to share their voters with us. I don’t see it. They don’t want us to have any more women voters than they do. So the idea that we’ve got to compromise by acknowledging that we’re wrong and agreeing with them on immigration in order to increase support from the Hispanic population doesn’t compute with me. It doesn’t make sense. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Daniel, I’m glad you called.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, first off on immigration, this is a story from a very excited (I would have to say cheering) Associated Press. “Senators Reach Deal on Immigration Changes.” Now, a previous caller… I’ll mention this again. We’ve done this before. We’ve done amnesty before. It was called Simpson-Mazzoli, and it was during the Reagan years. It was 1986. Reagan was not in favor of it, but he bought into it. They promised him, “If we do this once, that will be the end of it. Once we grant amnesty, that’s it. No more of this illegal immigration stuff.”

We’re talking about 1.1 to 1.3 million illegals back then. That’s what the haggle was over, 1.3 million illegals. Ted Kennedy went to the floor of the Senate in 1986. He said, “This amnesty will have been citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens. We’ll secure the borders hence forth. We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.” That’s 1986, Ted Kennedy, and here we are. This is the fourth year in a row that has been pushed. Well, more than four years. Go back to the Bush years.

In fact, this immigration bill that everybody’s touting on TV today is essentially the Bush immigration bill that was beat back in 2007. There might be a little change here, a little change there. The story from the ecstatic AP: “A bipartisan group of leading senators has reached agreement on the principles of sweeping legislation to rewrite the nation’s immigration laws. The deal, which was to be announced at a news conference Monday afternoon, covers border security, guest workers and employer verification, as well as a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country.”

What do you bet that…? In fact, here they go now. There they are. The press conference to announce this is occurring right now. We’re not gonna JIP it ’cause all eight of them will speak. We’ll get the highlights and maybe have some today, but certainly tomorrow. Chuck-U Schumer is taking the lead here. But the odds are that if this thing ever sees the light of day, if this comes to pass, then we’ll hear, “You know what? Maybe it actually wasn’t 11 million. It’s like 20 million illegals that we’re talking about.”

From TheHill.com we have a random act of journalism: “Comprehensive immigration reform could make millions of people suddenly eligible for assistance under President Obama[care], assuming a final deal paves the way for undocumented immigrants to receive papers. Illegal aliens are now prohibited from purchasing coverage through the [Obamacare]’s insurance exchanges, which will launch next year. … But the picture could change completely if Hispanic lawmakers get their wish — an overhaul of U.S. immigration policy that includes a path to legalization,” or amnesty.

“The consequences for Obama’s signature healthcare law, as well as healthcare providers, could be huge. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the legalization of undocumented people would benefit hospitals now burdened by uncompensated care.” Of course it would! How can it hurt to add 11 million or 20 million more people to free health care? How can it hurt? It’s a beautiful thing! Eleven million more getting “free health care,” which is what everybody thinks Obamacare is.

So you know it and I know it.

The ruling class, the political elites in Washington have wanted this since Simpson-Mazzoli. They’ve wanted it since ’86. During the second term of the Bush administration, it was an intense desire. Obama put it on the back burner his first term. But now, here it is on the front burner. We’ve got four Republicans and four Democrats who have signed on to it, and it appears to be a fait accompli. The Republican participation in this is taking place largely because they believe if they don’t do it, they will never win the presidency again because they will never get Hispanic votes.

That’s what they think.

They have been convinced that Hispanics hate them because of immigration. Now, we know this isn’t true. We’ve seen the data. We’ve seen the academic, scholarly data, and we know that 75%… I had these numbers before the election. It didn’t matter then and probably isn’t gonna matter now. Seventy-five percent of Hispanics do not vote for a president based on immigration. It’s not their top issue. The welfare state is. Government as the provider, government as the source of prosperity is the number one issue for Hispanic voters.

It isn’t immigration.

But the Republicans have bought the idea that they’re never gonna win anything if they don’t relax the perceived position they have on immigration. And what is the perceived position? The perceived position is, among Hispanics and the Hispanic political organizations, that Republicans are racists! The Republicans don’t like Hispanics, and Republicans want to deport them. Republicans want to kick them out. Why is that the perceived position?

Well, it’s not the Republican position. For as long as I’ve been paying attention, the Republicans have been begging for Hispanic votes! The Republicans have not said one thing to make anybody think they want Hispanics deported. Oh, there have been some people who have held principled positions about the law when it comes to immigration, and Republicans have been penalized for that. The law is an old-fashioned thing. The Constitution? Who needs it?

CBS News even ran a piece on how the Constitution can be kind of old-fashioned. What do we need it for anymore? It’s the same thing with any other law that people don’t like. This amnesty business, this illegal immigration, the idea is: The reason the Republicans are thought of the way they are is because of years and years and years of Democrat media distortion about the Republican position, and the Republicans inability to counter it.

So we have to accept the fact that a large percentage of Hispanics think that Republicans want to deport them, when nobody’s ever talked about deportation! Nobody’s ever advocated it. All the Republicans have advocated is fealty to the law. There’s a way to become a citizen, and why should certain people be exempted from it while the rest of the world is in line following the law? And so when they say that, the Democrats say, “See? They’re biased against Hispanics. See? They’re biased against Latinos.”

The Republicans’ reaction is sort of what happened to Sarah Palin. The media destroyed her, so the Republicans said, “The only way out of this is to kick her out of the party. The only way that we can survive is for us to publicly distance ourselves from Sarah Palin.” Rather than defend her, rather than do what they could to make the case that she was trying to make, just throw her overboard. Here with immigration they say, “Okay! All right!

“They believe X, so we can’t change that other than to do what Democrats do, because Hispanics like the Democrats,” and that’s basically where we are. Now, tomorrow, in our second hour, we’re gonna have Marco Rubio on the program to talk about this. He’s one of the eight who supports this, and he’s got and has long had his own immigration plan. I want to talk to him about how much of his plan he was able to make part of this. So we’ll have him in the top of the second hour tomorrow.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I don’t know. My guess is going to be that after we listen to some of the sound bites of, say, Senator Schumer and Senator McCain and Senator Menendez, some of the others on this bipartisan group announcing immigration reform today, my guess is that it’s gonna sound very close to exactly what we were told in 1986 with the first amnesty. I’ll bet you we hear that if we do this, we’ll never have to do it again. We’ve got to do this ’cause it’s out of control. We’ve gotta do this, secure the border, and so forth.

Anyway, one of Marco Rubio’s points, folks, essentially is that Obama’s already given us de facto amnesty anyway. He did it with the children of illegal immigrants via the executive order back last year. It was prior to the election. I mean, thanks to Obama you have amnesty unless you get convicted of a major felony. So I don’t know that there’s any stopping this. It’s up to me and Fox News, and I don’t think Fox News is that invested in this. I don’t think there’s any Republican opposition to this of any majority consequence or size. We’ll have to wait and see and find out. But this is one of those, just keep plugging away, plugging away, plugging away until you finally beat down the opposition.