Ann Coulter: "We Lose Everything If We Lose Immigration"
[Author’s note: While at CPAC, I was invited to attend a panel discussion on immigration. Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly and Glyn Wright of Eagle Forum, and Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies all discussed the ramifications of amnesty and why immigration should be the most important issue for liberty-minded conservatives. Eagle Forum has recently released a report entitled How Mass (Legal) Immigration Dooms a Conservative Republican Party. Excerpts from the panel discussion are below.]
Phyllis Schlafly: “…Let’s look at the public opinion polls that so many people have faith in and they do tell us that Republicans are fools to support any form of amnesty or continuing to import millions of foreigners who reject conservative views and are going to vote for the Democrats and I think the polls are very convincing of that…”
“… The analysis of all these various polls come to the same conclusion– that the Hispanic and Asian immigrants want a bigger government providing more services rather than what most conservatives want– which is less spending and less government and limited government. A poll by Pew Research found that 75%, that’s three-fourths, of Hispanic immigrants and 55% of Asian immigrants definitely want a bigger government giving them more services…Why is anyone surprised then that they voted for Obama?…”
Glyn Wright: “…I want to make sure that we all understand that fifty years ago Ted Kennedy transformed the American immigration system into one with virtually no limits. We released this report, in part, because it proves that it is essential to evaluate this issue if we want our core principles of limited government, individual liberty, and economic prosperity to remain…”
“…The number of immigrants coming to America has quadrupled since 1965. The surveys prove the issue that it is not about race or ethnicity, but about the majority of immigrants who sincerely believe in big government…”
Steven A. Camarota: “…Legal immigration is the main problem for the Republican Party in terms of votes. Its’s going to add about, if that Senate bill came through, over 30 million potential new voters in the next twenty years. Even without that, you are looking at about 15 million new [voters]. That’s people that have been here long enough that would have gotten citizenship and be old enough to vote. So, the impact is enormous…”
Phyllis Schlafly: “…There are some people who say, “Ok, you can cut some of the low wage people coming in but you have to let in these guest workers because we need to bring in the best and the brightest. I feel personally offended by that argument. I have 4 sons who have their degrees in electrical engineering and personally I think they are the best and the brightest. The whole guest worker system is full of fraud. Every argument that you take comes up with a bottom line: the people who want the large scale immigration, want the amnesty– really want cheap labor or democratic votes and that’s what they’ll get out of it….”
Ann Coulter : “…There’s no point talking about any other issue-we lose everything if we lose immigration. That is what Marco Rubio’s bill will do. People lose. 25 million. It is the equivalent of losing that many members of Congress, that many senators and never winning another presidential election. And yet, what’s strange about the immigration debate…I can’t think of another issue where you cannot hear the other side in the media. I think they correctly suspect that the American people may not be with them but, as a consequence, people only know what they hear on TV or read in newspapers and there are any number of things that you just talk to people and people don’t know big obvious facts about immigration. For example, did you know Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill would triple legal immigration? Triple it. Did you know that the children covered under the Dream Act include seventeen year olds? So, by now, we talk about giving amnesty to the children, the children… the children are 30 years old! Did you know that the majority of immigrants do not care about amnesty? The Democrats know. In Obama’s ads to Hispanic language radio and television stations, he never talked about amnesty. His ads were saying Obamacare is going to give you free healthcare. I was just thinking about the big line with the Democrats is that Republicans only care about the fetus until it’s born. Meaning that we don’t support a raft of social service workers, I guess. But, the point is how about flipping that on them? Democrats only care about immigrants until they can vote…”
“…1.2 million immigrants a year. Who is that hurting? That’s hurting the last wave of immigrants, it’s hurting our low wage workers. You know, my whole life I’ve heard Republicans are racist, they don’t care about black people, I never believed it until I read Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill–his is nothing but indentured servitude…”
“…We can’t have a rational discussion about immigration because liberals and Republicans will invoke the magical word: racist, racist, this is racist. As Phyllis Schlafly’s report demonstrates, this has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Immigrants from whatever country have always found a comfortable home in the Democratic party; in part, because they’re all coming from more liberal countries–though not so much anymore as we become more liberal. But, we used to be a beacon of freedom in the world-anyplace they were coming from. Look at New Hampshire. Just think about immigration in our own country. Oddly enough, you would think that people are saying, “I’m leaving all that behind. I’m coming to America.” No, they go to new places and bring their New York values with them when they move from New York to Florida, Boston to New Hampshire. They move for the low taxes and then vote for higher taxes. It is the same thing with immigrants from other countries…”
“…We don’t have time. We are doing the sorcerer’s apprentice thing trying to mop up the floor while the buckets are still being dumped. We need to cut off the flow, we need a moratorium, so we’ll have time to win them over and we will win over some immigrants–but it takes time…”
