Flash! Limbaugh notices that immigration is a problem

On the all-important issue of immigration, it cannot be said of radio host Slow Limbaugh that he has been at the cutting edge of societal evolution. In the first couple of years of his national show, which began in 1988, El Slowbo seemed generally pro-immigration in a Wall Street Journal kind of way. Then, as far as I could tell, he went from about 1990 to about 2001 without the word “immigration” being mentioned once on his show, whether by himself or by any caller, except in the narrowest possible context such as discussions about Proposition 187. One wonders what kind of screening mechanism the program had in place that not a single anti-immigration caller got through to the Great One in all those years. Maybe Slow’s fans simply got the message that his show was a strictly non-immigration area and stopped trying. In any case, of all the myriad burning issues of the day, immigration was the one issue on which utter silence reigned in the top conservative radio program in America. Then, in the post 9/11 period, Slow did critically mention the issue, or at least the illegal side of the issue, a couple of times, which was nice. And yesterday he made the strongest statement against large-scale immigration he’s ever made, which, it goes without saying, isn’t very much, but, ho hum, it’s better than nothing, and, oh miracle, he didn’t just criticize illegal immigration, which I think is the original definition of a no-brainer issue, but he seemed to be criticizing legal low-wage third-world immigration generally for dragging down the American wage level. So, extremely late and extremely little, we seem to have something new from El Slowbo, the man on the caboose of societal evolution.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 28, 2005 11:32 PM | Send