The Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor” anchor Bill O’Reilly said that President Obama’s executive order was “compassionate” but “may not be a just move” in an interview with illegal immigrant and journalist Jose Antonio Vargas on Thursday.
O’Reilly started by telling Vargas he was covered under the president’s “amnesty order,” although he did not think amnesty was a “pejorative.” He went on to ask “surely you understand how millions of people say, ‘you know what? Bad behavior is being rewarded. Not for everybody. It wasn’t your fault you were sent here at the age of 12, you didn’t do anything wrong, you just were plunked down here, you had an opportunity and you seized it. But there are a lot of people who aren’t of your circumstance who came here in devious ways who did things they shouldn’t have done, who didn’t contribute to our society. Yet, they are in the same blanket. So how do you justify that?”
Vargas responded, “more than half of undocumented people here in this country have been here for longer than 10 years. 10 years or longer. This has been our home. This is where we go to school. This is where we work. This is where we go to church. This is what we call to be our own communities.”
O’Reilly further pressed, Vargas, stating “it is a compassionate move…but it may not be a just move. because you and the other people here illegally don’t deserve to be here. That’s harsh, it’s harsh, okay? You don’t have an entitlement to be here, not through any fault of your own, but you don’t.”
Vargas said in response “I don’t feel entitled to be here. I don’t feel, I don’t ask for any sort of entitlement. all I know is this is where I grew up, this is my home, my family is here.”
Later, O’Reilly said that while he wasn’t buying the president’s argument that he was helping border security and thought Obama was “tearing apart the country,” and looks like “a phony,” “you gotta feel for” someone like Vargas.
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