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.
According to the
State Department's Office of the Historian, "the most basic purpose of the 1924 Immigration Act was to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity."
Congress revised the act in 1952.
Thirteen years later,
the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished the quota system.
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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