Rush Limbaugh on Illegal Immigration
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com
Uncivil, Mean-Spirited Pro-Illegal Movement Joins
with Hate-America Crowd, Jumps the Shark
April 5, 2006
RUSH: This is from the Washington Times. It's in my immigration stack. "The Department of Homeland Security is near an agreement with China to return up to 39,000 Chinese illegally living in the US to the communist country, which previously had refused to accept deportations. Homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff yesterday said that the tentative agreement which would let the US deport Chinese illegals as they are arrested will act as a deterrent to other foreign nationals contemplating..." How in the world is that going to happen? So we can deport people! We can round up illegals, and we can get rid of them. Now, that's just 39,000 here, but it's 39,000.
"Mr. Chertoff said, 'We can't be in the position any longer where we are paying the burden and bearing the burden for countries that won't cooperate with us and take their own citizens back.' Chertoff said this as he completed a week-long tour of China, Japan, and Singapore to discuss security and immigration issues." Does the Department of Homeland Security know what the White House is doing on immigration? These two messages are directly at odds. We do not do this with Mexico. Nobody even wants to try doing this with Mexico, and yet here we are, we've got these 39,000 illegal ChiComs and want to send them back to the ChiCom government. So it can be done, and it is being done. I'm telling you, folks, there's something about this. There's a couple news stories. I can't figure it out. Rational logic and reason doesn't explain what's going on between our government and Mexico when it comes to illegal immigration. Well, when it comes to the ChiComs we'll send them right back.
All right, a story here from the Arizona Republic, and you know, I'm getting a lot of e-mails like this, folks. "Paul Cattelino thinks of himself as liberal. Votes independent, supports gay marriage and is anti-war. His great-grandparents immigrated to the US from Italy in 1917. He's always empathized with Mexican immigrants. Then last week on television, the central Phoenix retail manager watched in stunned amazement as images of undocumented immigrants and their supporters at huge pro-immigrant rallies in Phoenix and across the country began flying the Mexican flag on American soil."
This liberal, Paul Catalino, says, "Call it racism. Call it whatever you want, but the fact is that the waving of Mexico's flag showed the rest of us, even this die-hard liberal and a large portion of the illegal immigrant community are not Americans. If people want to be Americans, they need to support Americans and that means waving the American flag." Well, it means much more than that. We discussed this yesterday. When you talk about Hispanic immigration, you're talking about two groups. You're talking about the people that follow the legal pathway, and then the other, which is where the subject of this whole debate is going now, and they're not even immigrants.
They're just coming here for jobs. They are not seeking to assimilate into our culture. They're not going through the legal pathways to become an American, which is much more than just waving the flag. They have no desire to learn English. They're setting up their own enclaves, and they're basically just uneducated poor people from south of the border that Mexico is gladly exporting and we are taking in, under the guise that we have an immigration debate going on. We don't have an immigration debate going on. That's really not what this is, and it's all because members of the political class in Washington won't face up to what is going on.
There's a television term. Have you heard the term "jumping the shark," when a show has a jump-the-shark moment? The jump-the-shark moment is when a television show does something so stupid and so bad that it forever dooms the program, and it can't recover from it, and the term actually has roots in reality. Back in the days of Happy Days, there was an actual scene in which Fonzie is out water-skiing somewhere and has to jump a shark.
A shark shows up. It was a stupid scene. It made no sense. The show never recovered after that scene, and now every television show has its jump-the-shark moment. Well, this movement, I said last week, with these 500,000 people in LA and all over the country, I said, "Waving the Mexican flag is going to be the jump-the-shark moment for the illegal immigration movement," and this is exactly what it is. This backlash is starting to happen, and it's not public yet, we're just starting to get little feelers of it. But I'm telling you these people running around waving the Mexican flag, and then demanding that no law be passed that effects them and what they want to do here, including be illegal, people aren't going to put up with this.
They're going to realize this isn't about immigration. So the jump-the-shark moment in the illegal immigration movement has arrived. I'll tell you something else that constitutes the jump-the-shark moment is the fact that all of these kook left wing communist groups have now taken over the movement, ANSWER and the Free Palestine movement. I mean, it's a typical collection of wacko, extreme leftist, pro-communist groups that have co-opted now the illegal immigration movement, and they're the ones that are putting on this big May Day March and protest and national boycott. May Day! The day that the communists and the Soviet Union drove all their military equipment past the reviewing stand at the Kremlin.
Well, the illegal immigrants want to be... It tells you who they really are and who their leaders are, and if they wanted to be co-opted by a bunch of pro-communist, anti/hate-America crowd people, then that's going to be another jump-the-shark moment. There can be two. There can be. There's usually only one, but once the American people get an idea that the hate-America crowd in this country has adopted the illegals, you're not going to find... You hear this guy in Phoenix (and he's just one of many, I'm telling you, who are out there), these leftists, liberals, they're having their compassion thrown right back in their face, folks. "We must understand the poor from around the world, and if they want to come here and improve their lives, why, who are we to stand in their way?"
Well, they're having that compassion thrown right back in their face because these people to whom they are extending all this compassion and understanding and feeling and pain, suffering, understanding, they're throwing it right back in their face. And it's going to cause even more reaction. There's a story in the LA Times today: "Florida Governor Jeb Bush Calls Tone of Immigration Debate 'Hurtful.' Accusing politicians of 'pounding their chests' on immigration for short-term political gain, Florida Governor Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the tone of the debate had been 'hurtful' to him and his Mexican-born wife, Columba."
I can't think of a single prominent voice on our side of this debate who's been anything but respectful and civil. I wish President Bush and Governor Bush, when they want to talk about the "incivility" out there, would name some names. Are they talking about J. D. Hayworth? Who are they talking about? This story talks about the Minutemen, and it talks about some members of Congress. The Minutemen? I mean, they're out there calling the Minutemen "vigilantes." They're not breaking the law!
They're not doing anything that's on the wrong side of the law. And yet here we have people being called vigilantes who are just obeying the law, while they're trying to do something about this illegal incursion into the country. The illegals are given a pass, they're called "the backbone of America." We're not allowed to criticize them. The Minutemen are called vigilantes! It's 180 degrees out of phase. It's the left, it's their side, that's urging all these protests. These protests, people are carrying the flags of foreign countries. It's their side trying to force on the American people illegal immigration that the people reject on principled grounds. It's their side using names like "nativists" and "know-nothings" and "racists" to describe people who are concerned about the illegal immigration problem.
As far as I'm concerned, we have argued the facts, and we have argued the law, and we're said now to be using a "negative tone" by those who are using the negative tone. The "negative tone" is coming from all of the people trying to get everybody up to speed for supporting this. Look at who they're teamed with. They're teamed with ANSWER. I told you this yesterday, a bunch of truly radical hate-America groups. Why doesn't Senator McCain, why doesn't President Bush, why doesn't Governor Bush chastise those people? Senator McCain's out there advising the illegals. (McCain Impression) "Don't fly those Mexican flags. Fly American flags out there." He's advising them. It's too late, the jump-the-shark moment has taken place. But it's amazing to see who is being criticized as uncivil and mean-spirited in this. (interruption) Well, I know. That's right. Because we're using the term "illegal," we are mean spirited. That's what I mean. We're sticking to the facts and the law.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just made the point: You got Governor Bush and President Bush, McCain, all these people -- I call them the open-borders crowd; that's what they are, the open-borders crowd -- accuse people like me of being "uncivil." The Minutemen are "vigilantes", and I ask, "Name for me one person who's being uncivil who's dealing with anything other than the facts here?" Well... (press release).
"The National Association of Hispanic Journalists urges news media to stop using dehumanizing terms when covering immigration, calls for stopping the use of 'illegals' as a noun, curbing the phrase 'illegal alien.' As protesters march in the streets and debate intensifies in Congress over how to fix the nation's immigration laws, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists calls on our nation's news media to use accurate terminology in its coverage of immigration and to stop dehumanizing undocumented immigrants." They're not "immigrants." They're not coming here to "immigrate," and they are illegal. Now, see, I guess I've just been "uncivil," right?
I said it twice, but I also raised my voice. I raised my voice in the attempt to make a point, to be emphatic. Here you have a bunch of journalists who are openly admitting that accuracy is not what they are about! Spin and propaganda is what they are about. Don't call them what they are. Don't call them "illegals," and don't call them "illegal aliens," and don't even refer to them as just "undocumented workers." They're not even immigrants. The ones we're talking about have no desire to immigrate. They're coming here for work. So they can't point out to me anybody who's being "uncivil," and I don't know why the open borders crowd is not upset at who it is that's organizing this big May Day shebang. This group called ANSWER, it's really part of the hate-America crowd, and they're just a bunch of renegade communists.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To San Diego. Fred, I'm glad you called. It's nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Good. Never better, sir.
CALLER: Great. The point I wanted to bring up was when you were talking about the waving of the Mexican flag that's been going on. It's been going on a lot here with all the kids at school and all that. Some of our north county schools as a result of trying not to stem some of the upset feelings were banning kids from bringing or wearing anything that resembles the American flag.
RUSH: Yeah, I have that story in my stack. I wanted to take your call as a transition into it. This is from the NBC TV station, NBC San Diego. "Schools Ban Patriotic Clothes and Flags -- School officials say the move is temporary. In the wake of last week's immigration reform protests..." It's not that. We gotta think of an accurate name for what these protests are because it's not immigration reform. I'm telling you, folks, this isn't about immigration. That's where this is all being missed. That's where members of Congress and the Senate are going wrong. We're not debating immigration. That's not what this is. The people that we're talking about want to come here illegally, not be punished for it, and not assimilate. They're not interested in following the immigrant path in this country. Because they're going to be future voters, and this is an election year, we cannot face the issue head on.
So... "In the wake of last week's immigration reform protests, one skrool district is taking drastic measures, banning all symbols of patriotism, both US and Mexican. Beginning Monday, the Oceanside Unified Skrool District is banning all flags and patriotic clothing. According to skrool officials, some students are using the garments and flags to taunt classmates. Some critics of the move are calling it a violation of free speech protections guaranteed by the Constitution. The ACLU points to the landmark Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines. In that case, skrool officials attempted to stop students who were protesting the Vietnam War from wearing black arm bands. 'The skrool has to be able to show a strong likelihood that there is going to be material and substantial disruption of skrool, and if they don't meet that standard then they can't censor student speech,' said Kevin Neenan of the ACLU."
I understand what they're trying to do out there. They're trying to quell any future unrest and trying to make it so that nobody gets provoked and nobody's feelings are hurt and so forth, but in the process, one side is being treated equally with the other. They're both being treated as provocateurs, and that's not the case. It's just stunning. But this is probably typical of what you would get in your average classroom conflict resolution lecture or class. So, anyway, these kind of things are going to continue happening, and folks, I'm just going to tell you right now I think it all constitutes the jump-the-shark moment. I think it's already started.
A backlash is effervescing out there. It's underneath the surface; it's starting to bubble up now. When you've got liberals in Arizona telling news reporters: "Yeah, forget it. Call it what you want, racism or whatever. When they started waving those flags, that's when I got a different picture of who these people are and what they're doing," and when this May 1st day comes around and you see all these pro-communist, hate-America groups sponsoring the illegals, it's going to put a different face on this and it's going to make it very tough.
I want to see the politicians in Washington handle this. I want to see them deal with it. I want to see how they handle the fact that a bunch of hate-America people and pro-communists are behind the next round of big protests against the United States. I'll tell you what, they're not ignoring all of it, because McCain was unable to get his little compromise through because not enough Republicans-- he doesn't have 60 votes for his and Kennedy's bill and that's because conservative senators in the Senate -- and there are some -- refuse to go along with it. So I think it's going to be somewhat like the ports deal only it's going to be much slower to build.
Folks, politics, like anything, is impossible to predict. But between now and November, anything can happen, and most likely what will happen is the unexpected, and everybody's assuming this immigration thing will sail right through, but, I'll tell you what. The House has a totally different version than the Senate and when the Senate and the House finish their bills, then they have to be conferenced. They have to be reconciled. That means members of the House and members of the Senate get together and hammer out the differences in the two bills.
There are some experts who think the differences are so great that there's not going to be an immigration bill this year, prior to November. There won't be one, and maybe it is that nobody really wants one. They just want to be able to say here's what I'm for. But I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't an immigration bill. All this is posturing for votes, but the safe thing would be no bill. Just don't change anything, just go out there and bloviate and articulate and pound the fists and talk about how we believe this or believe that in terms of whatever any politician wants to say to try to pander to whatever voting bloc he's pandering to, but the idea that there's going to be an immigration bill here, I wouldn't right now bet on it.
END TRANSCRIPT
