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Partial Transcript
Scarborough Country -- MSNBC -- March 30, 2004
Pat Buchanan -- Tamar Jacoby
See American Patrol Report Feature for Video of this showGuests: James Merritt, Jody Eldred, Tamar Jacoby, Ann Coulter, Rick MacArthur, Madeleine Albright
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(NEWS BREAK)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCARBOROUGH: "The New York Times" just reported that illegal immigration is exploding in the Southwest of America. Illegals and their smugglers have America's Southwest in their sights and are racing across the border at a record pace.
Federal officials estimate that, in Arizona alone, there's been an increase of 34 percent in just the last six months. And 40 percent of the illegal crossings are happening on the Arizona border. The cost? Extortion, drug trafficking and scores of dead victims in the desert.
With us tonight to talk about the epidemic and how it's just getting worse by the day is Pat Buchanan. He's an MSNBC political analyst and the author of "The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization." And we have Tamar Jacoby. She's senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of "Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What it Means to Be American."
Pat Buchanan, let me go to you.
It looks like, according to this "New York Times" article, that illegal immigration is exploding in Arizona and across the Southwest. Do you think President Bush's amnesty work program for illegals may be to blame?
PAT BUCHANAN, NBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh, I think that probably has some responsibility. I would guess that the Mexican situation probably has some, Joe.
But, look, the fundamental problem is, we have a president of the United States who refuses to enforce the immigration laws of the United States. He says, I can't enforce them. I won't enforce them. The only thing I can do is give amnesty to the people who break them. And if I were them, if I were a Mexican fellow and I lived down there under Vicente Fox and I'm making a buck an hour, and my family of five or six kids is having trouble, I would come to the good old USA as well, Joe.
SCARBOROUGH: Pat, why does the president of the United States, why do members of Congress that I served with, why do we have governors all across America saying we can't enforce our immigration laws? Are we that weak as a nation?
BUCHANAN: In a way, it is political cowardice of both parties.
The Democrats are delighted to have the immigrants come, because, when they are registered and when they vote, as they did in 1996, first-term Hispanic voters went 9-1 for Bill Clinton. The Democrats like it. The Bush people see the old Reagan Democrats dying out. And they say the only new broad group we can possibly get, we can't get the African-American minority. We haven't been able to do that since 1960.
The only one we can get is the Hispanics. If we come down hard and enforce the immigration laws, then we'll be called racists and xenophobes and we won't get them and we're finished. Both political parties are conspiring to let the America's immigration laws be trashed and broken. I think we're going to lose our country.
SCARBOROUGH: Tamara Jacoby, let me bring you in here.
And I want to read what Robert Bonner, who is the commissioner of customs and border protection, told Congress today. He said-quote-
"We are, I believe, getting control over our border." But despite his testimony, border agents are catching fewer illegals every year.
Last year there was 931,000 arrests, which is down from 955,000 in 2002 and 1.3 million in 2001. Tamar, regardless of how you feel about immigration, we're losing this war against illegal immigrants, aren't we?
TAMAR JACOBY, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: It's not a war. These are people coming to do work that we need done in this country, jobs that keep our economy growing.
We shouldn't be trying to keep people who are coming to contribute to the country out. We should have realistic immigration ceilings and immigration quotas that allow the number that we need to come to work.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBY: Sure we should enforce the law. We should enforce the law. And the president is trying to enforce the law. That's why he's talking to Mexico about a repatriation program. But the real way to get the system working is realistic ceilings, realistic quotas. What we have now is like prohibition. It's so unrealistic that it's impossible to enforce.
SCARBOROUGH: But, Tamar, you know what bothers me and why this is so unfair, everybody thinks, oh, gee, you know, if you're against illegal immigration, especially coming from Mexico, then you're against immigration. I'm not. I'm for legal immigrants.
JACOBY: Good.
SCARBOROUGH: But there are immigrants, people that want to be Americans in Europe, in Asia, all across the world. And when we let two million to three million Mexicans step in front of them illegally with some amnesty program, then we're actually penalizing people that want to come to America by playing by the rules.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBY: No, we're rewarding the enterprising people who have gotten here and gotten jobs. And it's unrealistic to deport them and send them home.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: All right, Joe, let me get on this.
Look, it's not two million or three million. You've got 8 to 14 million illegal aliens in this country. By the year 2050, you're going to have 105 million Hispanics in the American Southwest. Every American city is going to look like L.A. L.A. will look like Mexico City. You will have overwhelmingly Mexican population in all the Texas, Arizona cities. You're going to lose your Southwest. These folks come in. They speak Spanish.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBY: That is a lot of fear mongering.
BUCHANAN: Look, you're losing your country here.
JACOBY: These people are assimilating, just like every wave of immigrants has assimilated.
BUCHANAN: They're not assimilating. They're speaking Spanish.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBY: They're learning English. Their kids all learn English in the third generation.
BUCHANAN: Ms. Jacoby, let me ask you this. Why do the Mexican folks when our team goes down to play soccer chant "Osama, Osama" every time they score?
JACOBY: They don't. That's ridiculous.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: Why do they boo our team right in Los Angeles Coliseum?
JACOBY: That happened once.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: You think they're assimilating?
JACOBY: That's sports enthusiasm.
People are learning English. They're getting on the ladder here. They're contributing to the economy. They become middle class. In the third generation, two-thirds can't even speak Spanish anymore. They can speak only English.
BUCHANAN: Look, this is a country, Ms. Jacoby. This is not an economy. It is a country. It is a homeland. It is a nation.
JACOBY: And they buy into the country.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: They don't consider themselves Americans any more than if Joe and I went to Mexico.
JACOBY: Why are they signing up for the military and dying in Iraq if they don't consider themselves American?
BUCHANAN: They're signing up for the military because it's the best job these poor people ever had. And it's a fast track to citizenship. That's why.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBY: People don't go and die for their country for cynical reasons.
BUCHANAN: Well, let me tell you, what do you think the mercenaries fought for Rome for, for heaven's sakes? The best deal they ever had in their lives.
(CROSSTALK)
JACOBY: It's a really appalling thing to say about people who are dying for this country.
BUCHANAN: Look, I don't deny their bravery. I don't deny their desire to come here.
I would come here, too. I would join the military, too. But if you're going to keep a homeland and a family and a nation, you're going to have one language, one culture. And we don't have that. We're developing into two countries very rapidly. And you folks don't seem to give a damn about your country. You're worried about the size of the GDP.
JACOBY: I agree that we need a homeland, we need a nation, we need a sense of what it means to be an American, and we need it to be in one language. But I don't see-what you're so worried about I don't see happening.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: They're teaching in 200 languages tomorrow in Chicago in the schools right now.
JACOBY: Political are learning-America is a graveyard for languages. It was 100 years ago and it is today.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: They're not coming to the same country. You know as well as I do, we're into multiculturalism now, ethnic entitlements.
JACOBY: Sure. Sure. Sure.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: Out in California, you've got separate graduations for Hispanics, Asians, white, blacks.
JACOBY: But that influence is a tiny little percentage of middle class activists. Your average Mexican worker has no interest in that. He sees that, for his kids, the way is to learn English, get on the system, get on the escalator everybody has ever gotten on, get a job and get into the middle class, buy a home.
SCARBOROUGH: All right. All right, Tamar Jacoby, I'm sorry we're going to have to leave it there.
Pat Buchanan, thank you also for being with us tonight for an explosive SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY showdown.
And coming up, what do you call a dozen or so adults hurling big rubber balls at each other? Dodgeball, of course. And it's not just for kids anymore. And it's only fun if somebody loses an eye? What?
But first, a filmmaker reveals how Mel Gibson's film changes people's lives and documents the miracles that are performed since its release.
Stay with us for that story. It's coming up next.
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