Columnist Pat Buchanan declared that the president’s executive action would lead to a greater surge in illegal immigration, which he stated would be the beginning of the end of the United States as one nation and one people” on Monday’s “Laura Ingraham Show.”
“Historically, he’s [Obama] going to be responsible, of course, for this whole decision which I don’t think we realize how serious it is because I mean, if you’re a group that’s outside the country you say ‘look, that’s the second amnesty, the Americans can’t control the border. You get in, then you’re there permanently'” he stated.
Buchanan continued, “I think, really, you’re talking about the beginning of the end of the United States as one nation and one people when you’ve got your country open to really what is an invasion from abroad that you cannot really control.”
He also pointed to the rise of anti-EU sentiment in Europe and the success of parties like the UK Independence Party (UKIP), and moves for independence in Scotland and Catalonia and said “this sort of thing is going to happen in the United States because people, this is the key thing, people sense that they’re losing completely the country they grew up in.”
Buchanan also discussed the strain illegal immigrants will put on social services, predicting that “state budgets and federal budgets for all these services are inexorably going to rise,” and that the welfare state will grow.
He added that on the issue of the president’s executive action on immigration, the GOP was “no unified party. I’m sure the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and the others are saying ‘go ahead with the pro forma protest…but let it go.'” And “you’ve got a conflicted, confused Republican leadership already that Barack Obama knew that’s what would happen…and he went right at it.”
Buchanan concluded by arguing that Republican voters do not agree with the GOP “elites” on the issue of immigration because “if the Republican voters agreed with what the elites think and that [they] would like in their hearts then the elites wouldn’t be as terrified as they are now running around announcing their hostility to what Obama did, saying they’re going to impeach him and all the rest.”
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