Immigration — both illegal and visa-sanctioned — is weakening the United States, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh says.
“America’s a great country, and it was strengthened by virtue of immigration, but you can’t say that that is happening now,” he argues on his radio show Thursday.
Limbaugh charges two forces have contributed to an influx of immigrants in the last 50 years: a calculated push by the Democratic party that “reinvigorated illegal immigration,” and visa programs that attract highly skilled workers.
“The Democrats … need a permanent underclass,” Limbaugh charges. “They need a never-ending group of people… that will forever be proud, subservient dependents of the federal government. And hence here comes illegal immigration.”
He says Democrats “reinvigorated illegal immigration because we didn’t have any immigration – 1924 through ’65 we stopped all immigration so the immigrants then could assimilate and actually become Americans.”
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota, and completely excluded immigrants from Asia.
Limbaugh said an economic boom in the 1960s also saw “a lot of Democrat voters … leaving the Democrat Party because they were escaping the middle class and the lower middle class.”
But Limbaugh says most immigrants today are coming from Nigeria through a visa program known as H1-B, supported by tech industries looking for highly skilled workers.
“The way they’re casting it or trying to sell it, ‘Hey, hey, we’re not talking about illegal. … We need technologically advanced, educated engineers,'” Limbaugh said.
“But here’s the secret of it. They want these H1-B visas expanded and granted because they’re not adding employees — they’re replacing. They are firing and laying off current genius high-tech, high-educated engineers and replacing them with the immigrant H1-B visa engineers who will come here and obviously work for much less.”
Neither push is strengthening the country, Limbaugh says.
“This kind of immigration that we got going on now is not strengthening the country — it’s weakening it,” he says. “And when you hear the advocates for it continue to talk about how wonderful it is, it’s great for America, we’re a nation of immigrants — not this kind.”
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“we didn’t have any immigration – 1924 through ’65 we stopped all immigration ”
As usual, Limbaugh doesn’t know what he is talking about. From 1924 to 1965 there were no numerical limits on immigration to the United States from any Western Hemisphere country and in fact there was large immigration from Canada (mostly French-speakers to New England) and Mexico (mostly to the Southwest).
” most immigrants today are coming from Nigeria”
Another false statement. The countries sending the largest number of immigrants to the US, are, in order, Mexico, China, India, Philippines, Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Vietnam. In 2013 Nigeria was only #13 on the list.
“We need technologically advanced, educated engineers,”
That is a correct argument and what it does is to strengthen the United States and to weaken other countries by skimming away their best and brightest young people. Nativist bigotry like Limbaugh’s will weaken the US.