RUSH: To the phones we return on Open Line Friday. Eric in Queens, and great to have you, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Good day, Rush. It’s a great privilege to talk to you. It’s been a long time. I talked to you maybe in the late 1980s and just want to say Snerdley is a gentleman of first class order. I’m an American of Spaniard descent. My grandparents came here in the 1920s through Ellis Island. They came legally, in the traditional manner. I’m married to a Cuban-American woman who is very anti-communist, and I’m familiar with that community. I would like to say most of the mature Cubans are very unhappy with Rubio right now.

I think he counted on the idea that he could play the fence because a lot of the young Cubans are not as solidly Republican as they used to be, and I think he made a big mistake. I see him backtracking all over the place. He was on yesterday or two days ago with Bill Bennett. He sounded very edgy. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Bill Bennett asked him about these specific goals that you would need to accomplish to gain legal status, for instance, if you didn’t learn English. He asked, “Would anybody really be deported?” and Rubio said, “Well, then you would become illegal.” And then I was thinking about that. If you don’t meet these goals, there’s no consequence to it.

RUSH: No. Once they’re on the “pathway,” that’s it. There’s no requirements. They can say they’re gonna have to learn English. Who are we talking about? We’re talking about the same people that rammed Obamacare down our throats. We’re talking about the people that sued the state of Arizona for attempting to enforce existing American law, the same people that gave us the stimulus, the same people that couldn’t create a job if they had to. Nothing’s changed. They can say there’s all these requirements, but there aren’t any. If we’re not gonna deport anybody now, why are we going to after this?

CALLER: I don’t see anything in this for our side. I have friends. A lot of them are Venezuelans, refugees from Chavez, Hondurans, Costa Rica. They’re people who came here and earned their citizenship legitimately. They are so frustrated. They feel like I feel, and they feel that their citizenship is being reduced to just being trashed. You might as well print it on toilet paper. It’s outrageous. Also, we keep apologizing. We have legal immigration from Mexico, a very high amount. I mean, we keep talking about this “broken” immigration system.

RUSH: You know, that is another thing. That is another excellent point. We have nothing to apologize for to anybody about our immigration system to anybody else. But think about the immigration system. We have a legal immigration system. We already have a pathway. We already have a way for people to become citizens. The people who have followed that path — i.e., the law — are a little peeved over what’s happening here. The idea that we have to do this because we somehow need to apologize or make amends, that’s another thing. We’re not guilty of anything here.

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RUSH: Our last caller from Queens really had a good point, and that is, we don’t have to apologize for our immigration system. Our immigration system isn’t “broken,” by the way. It isn’t broken. Do you know the United States has probably the most generous legal immigration laws in the world? Every year we, in the United States, admit more legal immigrants than all other countries in the world combined, by a wide margin. Legal. Europe has lost control.

There may be a flood of illegals into France and the UK, but I’m talking legal. We do not have a system designed to keep people out in that sense. We’re not isolationists. We’ve got nothing to apologize for, in that sense, to the Hispanic community or anybody else. This notion that we have to apologize? I’ll tell you. The root of that is that what we have to apologize for is taking California and New Mexico and Arizona. That’s what that’s all about, just like we have to apologize with never ending affirmative action for slavery.

But we have nothing to apologize for right now.

We don’t have a “broken” immigration system, either.

Now, members of Congress keep running around and saying, “The impetus for this immigration reform is that we have a broken system.” We don’t. We have border that hasn’t been enforced and secured. That’s what’s broken. What else is broken is the American people have no trust in the people in Washington to do what they say they’re gonna do. In this case, they’re not even saying that they’re going to do it. There’s no trust, and then there’s the argument that says people like you and me are opposed to “reform.”

We “just don’t want reform.”

Wrong.

The people who are against a truly secure border before legalization are the ones who don’t want reform. We have a broken system, and it’s only broken because the border isn’t secure. And the reform that’s needed is to secure the border, and people that don’t want to do that are the ones who don’t want to reform anything. As usual, what’s coming out of Washington is 180 degrees wrong. We are the reformers, and the one true reform is fixing the border and then deal with our legal immigration system, which is perfectly fine.

It could be improved, maybe.

Maybe we could let more people in from different parts of the world who are educated here and become specialists in something but that don’t end up staying here. All those arguments could take place, but the idea that somehow we are keeping certain people out of this country is flat-out absurd on its face. The fact that we are not doing that is why we’re where we are, here. So the effort to ladle you with guilt upon guilt upon guilt is how they do it.

I don’t care if it’s global warming, I don’t care if it’s added welfare benefits or an enhanced “safety net,” it’s all guilt. “You have done things that you need to atone for. You, individual Americans! It’s your attitude. It’s the way you think. You need to apologize. You’ve been guilty of transgressions. You’re destroying the climate by driving the wrong kind of car, and air-conditioning your home too much or whatever else you’re doing. You must make amends. You must feel guilty! You must reform what you’re doing,” when in fact it’s governments that are messing everything up.

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RUSH: You know, there’s another alternative on immigration.

Nothing!

The alternative to what is being planned — nothing — is much better than the alternative. Do nothing! Just stop and let’s gather our thoughts and let’s start again. Let’s think about this, and come up with a real plan. (interruption) Oh, it doesn’t matter what we do, the Hispanic people are not gonna like us. That’s a false premise. I don’t want to hear that premise. The fundamental point is, we have been promised law after law after security after security, and none of it happens.

The option of doing nothing, as opposed to what the Democrats want — the option of doing nothing, as opposed to what Washington wants — is a good option.