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(Contents: Article, Analysis (op-ed), Transcript with link to audio file)

Rush Sees Immigration Problem, Chokes on Bush Solution

(Report on a conversation Friday, April 1, 2005, 1:40 EST, between Rush Limbaugh and his caller, Dave Leach of Des Moines Iowa.)

By Dave Leach (Dave Leach is listed in Marquis' "Who's Who in Media and Communications")

Rush Limbaugh, "the most listened to radio talk show host in the world", spoke with familiarity Friday of immigration issues, and acknowledged a solution which "used to work", but called it "pie in the sky" to think it can work again.

Limbaugh acknowledged the impracticality of a "plan" no more creative than to send 'em South, saying "I've heard it said we can't possibly identify them all. We can't round 'em up, and we can't kick 'em out. Because we can't find 'em. We don't know who they are." Implying that he agrees, he offered no encouragement that such a "plan" is feasible, even though the problem is massive enough to leave both Republicans and Democrats "shocked and stunned at what eventually happens to both of them in this country, if neither one of them stands up" and comes up with a solution which he himself seems unable to conceive.

Admitting that he doesn't "like being critical of the President on this", he nevertheless denied that President Bush could possibly be motivated by a belief that his Guest Worker Plan is "the right thing" or "might solve all the problems", and instead called it a political calculation, which is unfortunately a miscalculation creating "an issue waiting for [Democrats] to take over." In his March "Limbaugh Letter", to which his caller was responding, his sub-headline was "The White House may be dangerously misreading the politics." He wrote that Bush "bought the conventional wisdom that to lure Hispanic voters you've got to be soft on illegal immigration, and friends, they're wrong."

The plan which Limbaugh said "used to work" was described on the show in this way:

Dave: Bush's plan creates positive incentives for people to come out of the woodwork.

Rush: And identify themselves.

Dave: Um hmm.

Rush: And eventually be declared legal after being granted amnesty.

Dave: And if that plan were combined with a lifting of quotas to the extent that qualified people come up, and if there are positive incentives such as S 1387 had last year, for people to learn English, get education, stay off welfare, stay out of jail...

Limbaugh responded that "...these are all pie in the sky things. These are things that we used to happen automatically. Immigrants would come here, and acculturate. That's what you just described. They would acculturate. That's not what's happening. They're coming in here, and they're not acculturating here at all. We're having to use, you know, second and third languages, to register people to vote. Or to send out emergency warnings or whatever. There's there's so little acculturation going on. The law is still being wantonly violated."

The question begged by this response is: since the S 1387 criteria for Legal Permanent Residence would create powerful incentives for immigrants to very quickly "acculturate", [become conditioned to the patterns and customs of our culture], why is his reason, for dismissing them, that a problem exists for which they are the solution? Or, "No, no, there can't be a solution, because there is a problem!"

ANALYSIS (Op-ed)

It may seem too much to hope for, but this conversation may actually contain evidence of emerging consensus in the U.S. about what a successful immigration policy must contain, and what kind of policy will not work.

Everyone seems to at least agree that the current system does not work.

But will more of the same work? We do not have the resources to drag all "illegal aliens" out of the shadows against their will; we can't even find them. We do not have the resources to stop them all from crossing our borders. But would we have the resources, with enough more USCIS agents? Although this seems to be the vision of a growing number of very emotional Americans, no one has yet set forth a detailed plan for dragging "illegals" (or any estimated percentage of them) out of the shadows, giving the number of agents, the size of the budget needed to employ them, and the Constitutional rights the rest of us would have to give up. (For example, the Real ID Act turns state drivers' license databases into a national database, and takes from states the choice of what data to collect.)

We may guess the reason no one has set forth such a detailed plan. One reason might be that the cost would frighten immigration's worst critics into happy delight with the status quo. Another reason might be that no matter how high the cost, no plan can succeed. If we consider the number of arrest warrants out for fingerprinted citizens which are never executed, what will it take to gather in 10 million people whose physical descriptions have never been officially recorded?

Rush tacitly acknowledges "more of the same" is unrealistic by declining to recommend it even though the problem seems so vast to him. But that doesn't stop millions of Americans from demanding that their lawmakers get serious and fix the problem. But when you read their articles and notice the lack of details in their vision, you begin to perceive the problem is like that of a crying baby who cannot tell you what is wrong, only that something is wrong. In the case of the baby, you fix as much as you can, and if you determine nothing more is wrong, you either distract or, if necessary, discipline the baby. In the case of millions of Americans, we have to be more creative.

We should not confuse the war between America and its courts, and the battle over immigration. In 1982, Plyler v. Doe required all public schools across America to give free education to children here illegally. Prop 187 in California, which would have controlled state welfare payments to unauthorized immigrants, was overturned by courts. U.S. law says emergency care need only be provided to unauthorized immigrants until the patient has "stabilized", which means stable enough to be transported to another hospital, but the North Carolina Court of Appeals defined "stable" to cover months-long chemotherapy treatments without which the patient would have "seriously deteriorated". When the best efforts of the American public to accommodate unauthorized immigrants under conditions they think they can live with are thwarted by courts on the basis of logic which is certainly not Constitutional and is barely sound, naturally Americans will become justly enraged. Immigration is only one of many issues which have brought arrogant law-defying judges into the crosshairs of American citizens and lawmakers, however. Arrows of rage flying towards them should not be mistaken for arrows flying towards unauthorized immigrants, even if rage can become blinding.

How about positive incentives to draw out unauthorized immigrants from the shadows voluntarily, and become "acculturated"? Rush says that is how it used to happen, and it worked. No one really says the plan would not work, if the law is written with wisdom so that the incentives to step forward are mostly positive and available to most, enforcement is simplified by reliance on positive incentives for workers and employers to report violations, and the criteria don't require a lawyer to understand. The objections are, rather, a couple of legal terms which are popularly but dogmatically misused.

Amnesty. As I pointed out to Limbaugh, "amnesty is where you keep the same law, but you take a group of the people who are violators of it, and forgive them, but keep the law in place so that [other] people continue to be violators. ...amnesty is obviously a problem because it it just creates more incentive for people to...swarm up North, but that's...not what Bush is proposing. We're proposing changing the law. And changing a law is not amnesty. Every time you change a law, you make some who are violating it so that they're not violating it any more, and vice versa." Changing laws is the only legitimate job of a lawmaker, and the most legitimate reason for changing a law is a determination that the existing law defines some as lawbreakers who aren't doing anything wrong, or vice versa.

If you want to call this process "amnesty", then if you oppose "amnesty" you oppose the existence of lawmakers. Which isn't a bad position to take, but then our immigration laws could not be fixed in any other way, either.

A less legitimate reason for changing a law is that enforcement is impractical because too many are breaking the law, and approving of the lawbreaking. This is the reason we repealed Prohibition. (Prohibition was a constitutional amendment in 1920 outlawing alcoholic consumption. It was repealed a decade later.) Was that repeal "amnesty"? Did that "undermine the Rule of Law"? Did that "reward lawbreakers"? Should we undo those horrible errors and enact Prohibition again? How about our repeal of other important laws, such as against adultery, sodomy, and dueling?

Rule of Law. It is very often said that changing our immigration laws to create positive incentives for today's "illegals" to willingly come out of the shadows would "reward" them for "lawbreaking", which would "undermine the Rule of Law."

Again, this logic would apply equally to every change in every law. How can it "undermine the Rule of Law" to fix a "broke" law which has become an international scandal for arresting millions for the "crime" of going to work, while providing terrorists and drug runners a virtually open border?

Limbaugh wrote in his article, "the rule of law is being undermined by widespread, unprosecuted violations of our immigration statutes." Fair enough, but if that is true, won't the undermining of our Rule of Law be slowed down by rewriting our laws so they are enforceable? Yet Bush's attempt to rewrite immigration laws so they will be enforceable is what drew Limbaugh's criticism of Bush for failing to address this problem. As if Bush's plan would weaken the perfectly healthy Rule of Law we now have, rather than begin to heal the cancer eating away America's Rule of Law known as immigration quotas.

If Des Moines passed a law saying the first 500 people who get up in the morning to go to work may drive on our roads, but the rest have to walk, would you think we still have the equal protection of our laws?

"Equal protection of our laws" is the 14th Amendment's way of defining "rule of law". In our Republic, the same laws are binding upon everyone, even our lawmakers, in contrast to a pure democracy where the majority may enact laws binding only upon a minority, creating a rule of Legalism. In a democracy which is not also a Republic, a majority can vote to tyrannize a minority, which is not a rule of law at all, but is only an extension of the concept of a dictator to a larger number of people.

(Of course "equal protection of the laws" doesn't mean babies can vote; but no law prevents a baby from growing into an adult, thus qualifying to vote. We don't let everyone be a doctor, but everyone has the opportunity to try to get through medical school, and if they can, then they may be a doctor. Before 1875, we required fluency in English and understanding our form of government before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote, but no law kept that opportunity from any immigrant.)

When the majority decides to impose, upon a minority, restrictions it will not accept upon itself, that is not the "rule of law", but the "rule of raw power". It is lawlessness. It is hypocrisy. When we deny to others the same right to work which we expect for ourselves, when we impose mindless quotas upon Hispanics which we are glad were not imposed upon our own great grandparents, when we deny Hispanics the right to come here, not to live off charity but to pay, with their own hard labor, for goods and services willingly sold by American businesses and individuals, while we expect for ourselves the right, should we choose, to emigrate to another country for all summer, or for a few years, or to retire, then we fall under Jesus' bitter criticism of the lawyers of His day: "Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers." Luke 11:46.

The majority of Americans have NO RIGHT to "decide" that a minority of those sharing their land are "criminals" for doing what they themselves do! Any "majority" which makes such a cruel, hypocritical "decision" ought to be ashamed of itself!

But the majority is by no means behind the current hypocrisy, which is the main reason the "half-mile high fence from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico" crowd is more "pie in the sky" than anything Bush has proposed. When police, social workers, and lawmakers are reluctant to report every illegal to the USCIS, and even USCIS agents are often unwilling to act on reports, out of compassion, how do you expect Americans to become hard hearted enough to send illegals South where they will not only be denied free education and welfare, but a chance to work and feed their families? Too many Americans empathize enough with immigrants to see what they are going through, and to want to help, not to punish.

More Straw Dogs. Driving Down Wages. Limbaugh speaks for many in accusing Bush's plan of worsening the problem of immigrants driving down wages, even though Bush's plan would lessen the problem. Which do you think will drive wages down more: the current system, where illegals hiding from police are willing to work for $3 an hour, Bush's plan where illegals become legal and thus less afraid to ask for $10 an hour, or Congressman Steve King's plan where all the illegals are rounded up and sent back South to work in American factories for $5 a day?

Mooching Off Welfare. Limbaugh sympathizes with those who "don't like the pressure being put on our safety net, our health and welfare systems". In his article he is more specific: "...they aren't paying taxes, and they use public services. Illegal aliens send their children to school and go to hospitals; indeed, the burden of their care has closed a fair number of hospitals. While many of them work hard, almost 25 percent of the inmates in our federal prisons are illegal immigrants." A horrible verdict, even though he next says "But the vast majority are pawns in a cynical game that's being played over their heades, condemning them, as President Bush said, 'to fear and insecurity in a massive, undocumented economy.'"

The first question to ask is whether Bush's plan would make this worse or better? The second question: are these accusations true?

Unauthorized immigrants already pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, unless you count benefits to their citizen children born here as welfare for illegals; and if Bush's plan is implemented with the right details, with incentives to learn English, get educated, earn pay raises, pay taxes, and stay off welfare, the $33 billion windfall they produce for us already would greatly increase.

(The most thorough study of how much illegals pay in taxes compared with how much they receive in benefits was by the Center for Immigration Studies in August of 2004. It concluded they cost the federal treasury about $10 billion, but CIS counts, as welfare benefits to illegals, services given to the U.S. Citizens born to parents illegally here! Their own figures, for benefits received only by unauthorized immigrants, show that they pay $33 billion more, in federal taxes, than they receive in federal benefits. The study concludes that legalizing them would increase their $10 billion cost to $29 billion, but that assumes legalizing them would include no incentives to get educated or stay off welfare. The study explains that uneducated immigrants aren't any more interested in welfare than uneducated citizens, but rather that lack of education makes anyone more dependant upon welfare, and immigrants are less educated than citizens. Well, duh, it's against the law for "illegals" to go to college! Of course they are less educated! Repeal that nutty law, and then make education and staying off welfare a criteria for Legal Permanent Residency, and they will be even less reliant on welfare than they are now, while paying more in taxes! About 55% of themalready have taxes withheld from their paychecks; legalizing themwould increase the percentage to nearly 100%, according to the CIS study.)

The solution to the immigration problem is, first of all, to start, as a nation, focusing on the possible details of a solution, and grow up from the national crybaby who can only bawl that something is wrong. President Bush hasn't even limited his "plan" to any particular details, yet people criticize it without knowing what it is. Details of legislation make it good or evil. We need to start taking seriously this inquiry, and stop blaming our lawmakers for not taking our concerns seriously just because they can't think of a better solution than Rush Limbaugh can.

Elected lawmakers have to come up with a solution which not only works, but is popular enough to pass the Congress and become law. But if the public will not study the details of what will work and not work, then the details of what will work can never become popular.

To treat unauthorized immigrants to less equal laws than we treat ourselves may at least be understood, so long as it is believed that is necessary for our self defense. But those Americans who stop their ears to the evidence that unauthorized immigrants are a blessing to us now, and would be more so if we would treat them fairly, while remaining determined to shoot themselves in the foot to spite their neighbor, are simply guilty of hate. But that's the way hate always is.

Transcript: Rush Limbaugh and Dave Leach

Friday, April 1, 2005 AD, 1:40 EST. (Click here for an 8 MG .wav audio file)

Rush: We go back to the phones. Here's Dave in Des Moines Iowa. Dave, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you with us.

Dave: Hi. I'm responding to your article, "My warning on illegal immigration", in your March Limbaugh Letter.

Rush: Yes, I have the Limbaugh Letter of which you speak in my formerly nicotine stained fingers.

Dave: (Laughing) I thought you might. I'm wondering why you assume Bush's motivation behind his Guest Worker Plan is to get Hispanic votes is just to, because he believes it's the right thing, or, that it might solve all the problems that everyone's complaining about.

Rush: Well, I I I I think it's political, because I think it's political. I we ugh Let me give you th th th immigration is an interesting thing. I th th Immigration divides two big Republican constituencies. The th th the two big constituencies are this are pro-business, and the anti-immigration people. Call 'em cultural conservatives, whatever you want to call them. But the pro-business ah pro business conservatives love the fact that there is a supply of illegals in the country because they are new and they work cheap. I have, when I have been critical of immigration, and the President's policy, I have taken phone call after phone call from farmers, and from people in agri-business, and they say "you better be careful about this, Limbaugh, because if you keep talking about this, and you end up succeeding in rolling back the numbers here, your food costs are gonna skyrocket. And I write about this in the article that you've read. I uh so so we're supposed to have illegal immigrants to keep our food prices low. The implied threat there is is that Americans won't work that cheap, and so we're supposed to have, we're we're we're supposed to take food prices being low as the price we pay for illegal immigration.

Now that, if, there's no question that if I got agri-business farmers and er calling me, I guarantee you when it's time to raise money at the White House, and the RNC, they hear from them too.

Then you've got the other side of it, which strictly doesn't like illegals, because they don't like the pressure being put on our safety net, our health and welfare systems, and just the morality of it. The ethics of it. There there's the word "illegal". I also know that what [Carl] Rove and Bush are trying, I support this by the way, Rove and Bush have, as one of their grandiose schemes, one of their plans to really destroy the Democratic Party today, as it's known, as a functioning opposition. They're trying to smother it. And one of the ways they're doing it, is to try to get a certain percentage of a number of different constituencies that vote Democrat. They're trying to get a certain percentage of the Black vote, they're trying to get a percentage of the Hispanic vote, they're trying to get a percentage of a number of different oiuyharfg the Democratic party is an amalgamation of a whole bunch of different constituency groups. And you've heard it said before, if Republicans can just peel off 5-10% of the black vote. And, say 5-10% of the Hispanic vote, the Democratic party's finished. And I have no question that's part and parcel what's going on. I also think, I've heard it said we can't possibly identify them all. We can't round 'em up, and we can't kick 'em out. Because we can't find 'em. We don't know who they are. So the best thing to do is to come up with a policy that will eventually allow them, grant them amnesty, and eventually allow them to beyuh beyuh you know guest workers, if they stay here long enough, keep their noses clean, the, then they'll be able to uh noye be legal.

[Ed: Notice that I interrupt him at this point, before we can learn if he agrees with "what he has heard said". However, as I finish my point, I leave him exactly where he left off, with a few more details of a plan (which he erroneously calls "amnesty" but which would in fact simply be a change in the law, which is the only thing lawmakers do and is what we expect them to do) like what he begins to describe. Notice later that after I leave him with that, he acknowledges that it "used to work" but to think it will work again is "pie in the sky" because immigrants no longer "acculturate". After listening to my list of powerful incentives for immigrants to once again "acculturate", it is strange that he dismisses those incentives for the reason that the problem exists for which they are the solution. Or, "No, no, there can't be a solution, because there is a problem!" As for whether he thinks it is true that "we can't possibly identify them all. We can't round 'em up, and we can't kick 'em out", he does not directly say. He seems only to bring it up in order to knock down President Bush's solution. But he implies that he agrees, by articulating the problem so persuasively, and by offering no encouragement about the feasibility of rounding "them" up, in his article to which I responded. ("My Warning on Illegal Immigration", The Limbaugh Letter, March 2005.) He also implies that he agrees, by describing the problem as massive enough to leave both parties "shocked and stunned" if they fail to come up with a solution which Rush himself seems unable to conceive.]

Dave: Can I make a point about the word "amnesty"? People, uh, Congressman Steve King can't stop using it for example. Uh, amnesty is where you keep the same law, but you take a group of the people who are violators of it, and forgive them, but keep the law in place so that people continue to be violators.

Rush: Amnesty would be fine, except one half of what you just said we're not doing. We're continuing to allow the law to be broken. We're making few efforts to actually stop the swarm.

Dave: Right. But Am amnesty is ob obviously a problem because it it just creates more incentive for people to come up, swarm up North, but that's not what anyone is proposing now. That's not what Bush is proposing. We're proposing changing the law. And changing a law is not amnesty. Everytime you change a law, you make some who are violating it uh so that they're not violating it any more, and vice versa. And eh uh I I share the concern that the security problem isn't going to be solved, we we just by brute force, but uh Bush's plan creates positive incentives for people to come out of the woodwork.

Rush: And identify themselves.

Dave: Um hmm.

Rush: And eventually be declared legal after being granted amnesty.

Dave: And if that plan were combined with a lifting of quotas to the extent that qualified people come up, and if there are positive incentives such as S 1387 had last year, for people to learn English, get education, stay off welfare, stay out of jail...

Rush: OK. Loo loo lookit you're talking, these are all po pie in the sky things. These are things that we used to happen automatically. Immigrants would come here, and acculturate. That's what you just described. They would acculturate. That's not what's happening. They're coming in here, and they're not acculturating here at all. We're having to use, you know, second and third languages, to register people to vote. Or to send out emergency warnings or whatever. There's there's so little acculturation going on. The law is still still being wantonly violated. Then when people reach the point they're not going to take any more, they pass things like Prop 187 in California, Prop 200 in Arizona, where they say "Fine, if you're not going to keep the illegals out of here, we're going to pass laws that say we're not going to pay taxes, we're not required to pay taxes, that will grant them welfare status or health care or whatever.

You know and and then and and I know one of the arguments, well these illegals are coming and they're having kids here, and those kids that are born here are naturalized citizens. Natural citizens. And so then what do we do with their parents and so forth? But what the people see, I'm just, I'm just going to tell you this, I don't like being critical of the President on this. You have, you have to understand something folks. And I've said this over and over and over again. You know, we talk about how the Democrats are screwing themselves, and the Democrats are using a 30-year-old playbook and the Democrats are sitting around, and not learning from their mistakes, or continuing to make the same old mistakes, and they're nothing but negative, and seething with rage, and all that's true. And we also know the Democrats are sitting around waiting and hoping the Republicans will blow it on something. They're not really advancing their agenda on Social Security, or on anything else they're being critical of, they're just trying to put a giant brake on whatever the Republicans want to do. And they're hoping, in the process, Republicans make some mistake and screw up.

I'm telling you, I don't think this is something the Democrats are immune from, either. I think both parties are going to be shocked and stunned at what eventually happens to both of them in this country, if neither one of them stands up and takes this seriously from the citizen point of view. On the one hand we are telling the citizens, "You've got to get informed, and you've got to get knowledge, and you've got to take action, the judiciary's out of control." On the other hand, the same people are saying to the people, who they want to be informed, and and educated on the judiciary, they're saying to those people at the same time, "what you think about immigration doesn't matter."

And these people are fed up, and they're fired up about it, and it's it's not just border states any more. And uh uh when it doesn't help, when you've got this group called the "Minute Men" going down to monitor, just trying to call attention to the problem, and the President says they're "vigilantes", and they you've got this group from Central America, this gang bunch gonna come up and start busting heads if uh they can, just to make the vigilantes, uh well not the vigilantes but the Minute Men look bad, uh the American people are speaking. The American people are trying to speak as loudly as they can, through the ballot box, through public protests, that they don't like what's happening here. And it's it better be listened to. Because it's gonna keep, this this cry of anger is going to keep getting louder and louder and louder if it keeps being ignored. The fact that ee uu ii there has to be politics involved in this. It's impossible that there wouldn't be. In something like this. And I'm not saying politics is necessarily bad, but you ask me why do I think there's politics involved, and I uh I because I think there is. There's, uh there's no question about it. A happy balance needs to be found here. Heyuh gonna have politics involved, you gotta listen to the politics of the people, of the country complaining about it, because they're the ones being forced to pay for it. And the same time they're being told, "Well you better be thankful for this because your food is so cheap."

So you've got the rift in the Republican party and the Democrats are gonna make the same mistake by thinking this is strictly a Republican problem. If they don't get on board and do some... It's an issue waiting for them to take over by the way, and if they did, uh, it could present problems for Republicans down the road. This Ma mark my word folks, keep an eye on this illegal illegal immigration, because it's a potential powder keg.

Summary of what he said later after the station break: the first Senate debate over amnesty in 10 years will occur since the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that a Senator's amendment to the pending Emergency Spending Bill will be allowed debate; the amendment would make illegal agriculture workers legal. For all the cheap food we are supposed to be getting, how much are our taxes going for their welfare?

Remember the government is involved. When government sees your food costs go down, they figure you can afford more taxes. If gas prices plummet, they worry that you won't pay as much for them to fix roads. But when prices rise, do they ever say "they can't afford such high taxes; maybe we better cut taxes"?

The House has already passed the Real ID Act which also cuts down on claims of asylum and drivers' licenses, so the Senate parliamentarian says that opens the door for Senator Larry Craig, Idaho Republican, to amend his Ag Jobs bill to legalize the 500,000 to 1 million ag workers now working illegally.

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